I think 7 years into the journey of multicultural and bilingual childrearing I can confidently say that we have three bilingual children (taking their ages into account of course). Our attempt was a success.

At the start I was often worried and intimidated by comments like “bilingual children are speech-delayed” or “children should learn one language properly first before learning a second” or “kids get confused learning two languages”. Listening to other people’s stories also scared me where the children just didn’t want to speak one of the languages (usually the minority language, the one that is not spoken in the society outside the home). It often seemed like such a struggle to raise children understanding and speaking two languages and not being embarrassed by that.

I think exposing the children to both languages by actually living in both countries has contributed heaps to the success. I’d recommend it to anybody who has the guts to do it. Admittedly it was the hardest time in my life (I’ve experienced so far), moving literally from one end of the earth to the other with three children under 5, but it was also immensely rewarding and exciting … the biggest adventure of my life … so far, who knows I might climb Mount Chomolungma one day

Now the thought struck me that this would be a good time to re-start my own education and start working towards a Uni-degree or some other qualification. I’m still trying to work out if this was really my own idea and wish or if it was heavily influenced by the pressure of the society that I live in (former East-Germany): “Do something with your life!”, “You can’t just look after the kids, you need to do something for yourself!”. I have heard that it’s quite different in the western parts of Germany, where it’s not uncommon for mum’s to stay home for many years and look after their children full-time. In the town that we live in mum’s stay home for one year paid-maternity-leave to then return to their previous position. As a generalisation the only people that stay home for longer are the long-term unemployed who end up having a child every three years to keep social-benefit-payments going.

Where do I fit into all of that?

Given that school finishes before lunch here (at least for the little ones) I thought distance Uni would be the only thing feasible. But with little M3 only in kindergarten (pre-school) 3 mornings a week I don’t find that I’ve got quite enough time to really get into uni, move forward there and manage the kids and household alongside that without going nuts. Many people here say, that I could put the kids into pre-school more days (which is what we’re actually already paying for anyway, though we don’t use it ). For German standards they are going way less than most children … but for my standards – largely influenced by Steve Biddulph and my time living in Australia – that is quite enough.

I find it really tricky to work out what I want and set priorities … I think this whole work-life-balance is a lie (ok. I’m only using a term here, that I don’t actually really know anything about). But how are you supposed to manage work and small children, household and not be a totally cranky mate for your husband at the end of the day?

For the time being I had decided to give up uni as I couldn’t see myself getting anywhere with the time I had. Somehow the idea of staying home and not doing anything else even though the children are being looked after some of the time didn’t seem perfectly fulfilling to me either. So I started a new soul search. The big questions that hang over me are: WHAT DO I WANT? WHERE DO I WANT TO GO? WHAT ARE MY GOALS? WHAT DO I ENJOY? WHAT AM I PASSIONATE ABOUT? my problem is no-one can answer those for me …

I’m trying to learn all about time management from Michael, so the book that he bought for me (a year ago … ooops) is still on my list of books I want to read: “Getting things done”

I also want to watch this video when I’ve got an hour spare.

And while looking through MIT’s OpenCourseWare stuff I found a really interesting course called “How to learn (almost) anything” , they’ve got the complete list of readings up … lots of food for thought

John Holt’s “Learning all the time” is up there, this guy invented the term or idea of unschooling, as far as I can make sense of it

I’m planning on browsing through the book tomorrow

A new era has begun in my life. My children are out of the house 3, 4 and 5 mornings a week and I’m preparing to study again. Don’t know whether to be scared, excited, daunted or just happy about this. But I don’t want to waste time trying to work out how I feel about this, I’m spending my time until my course work arrives as productively as I can:

1. I’ve already tried to move all my housekeeping to the afternoons and evenings or really early mornings, cooking on the weekend or the evening before, hanging out washing in the evening … cleaning has slid further of my list of achievables
2. I’m hoping to have a bit more time playing my clarinet until the coursework arrives (that hasn’t worked as yet)
3. I’ve tidied up a big shelve in my bedroom
4. I’m still planning on tidying up my sewing table and also hoping on finishing some of those unfinished projects before I’ll probably never have time to do any sewing or knitting again
5. I started to find some good librarian blogs this morning (my degree is a pretty general BA in Educational Science ie. the science of educating people, at the moment I’m thinking that I’d like to do some postgrad study after that that will allow me to work in a library setting). Here is a really good comprehensive list:  now I’m just a bit overwhelmed, so much to choose from, where do I start
6. next step must be to get my google reader going and decide on 5 blogs that I’ll follow for a while before evaluating

ready, set, go!!!

Little m (so not to be confused with our eldest daughter M … hmm, I’ll have to work out some consistent system of naming our children while at the same time protecting their privacy, so until I figure out something really good I might just copy what I’ve seen some other people do and just call them girl5, girl3 and boy2).

So anyway boy2 has found the answer to the ultimate question of life.

He’s playing the ‘why’-game with us at the moment. Common conversations with him look something like that:

Michael: “Daddy is going to buy some bread.”

boy2: “Why?”

“because we’re out of bread”

“Why?”

“because we ate it all up”

“Why?”

“because we were hungry”

“Why?”

“because we used up energy”

… you can see where this is going?

I bet you can’t because whenever we run out of answers for our curious little boy he provides them himself: “Cause the tiger eats it!”

Now there you’ve got it, the tiger ate it up. Whatever you want to know about or whatever you’re looking for, you can stop worrying because the tiger ate it!!!

Living right next door to Europe’s largest skating path (which is also open to bike riders) is one of the good sides of being confined to bikes.

Little E is not to be deterred. She was back on her bike in full shape and rode with us for 18kms through the countryside to get to our hostel (then another 2kms and of course we had to get back as well … so she managed extremely well … after all she’s not even 4 yet)

The next day we did a little more exploring and rode to another village to have lunch there. We had a wonderful time relaxing in the quiet villages, where really the only thing going on is the hustle of all the skaters and bike riders coming past … some more serious than others.

I just thought it’s wonderful to be able to ride without having to worry about cars. It’s perfectly safe and smooth riding and has allowed our kids to become very good bike riders at quite an early age (though I guess they’re not very good swimmers by Aussie standards

poor E had a bike accident this week.

She’s been doing incredibly well riding her big bike without training wheels and all but I guess accidents are part of learning.

Well the little girl wanted to scratch herself and forgot that she hadn’t learned to ride one-handed so she just crashed straight into the wall that was next to us.

Luckily, she didn’t hurt anything exept the lip but that caught the full impact of the crash and looks accordingly. But getting to eat ice-cream to cool the swollen thing isn’t bad.

Michael said to E: “Please eat up your dessert … ahhmm I mean salad.”

E in response combined with big giggles: “Daddy said “dessert” to my salad.”

M getting involved: “Why did you say “dessert” to her salad?”

Michael: “No, I called her salad “dessert” and said it to E …(under his breath) I’m not talking to a salad.”

M again: “Why did you call her “Sally”?”

This might be a sure sign for you that we’re slowly loosing it, I guess all this moving around does take it’s toll

And this is what it’s all about, IMC has got a project called “Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children” and this is some information from their press release:

Hunger and malnutrition kill more people in the world than HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria combined. As food prices rise, this funding is even more critical. More people are being driven deeper into poverty trying to afford basic staples. Many have nothing to eat at all.

For severely malnourished children, we offer a step-by-step treatment program that gives them what they need to recover, including nutrient-dense food supplements like the peanut-based product, Plumpy’Nut. Our comprehensive monitoring system saves more than 90 percent of children being treated in our feeding centers.

And this is where we come in, American Express has donated $1.5Million dollars to be given to an Aid Organisation. So if IMC wins the vote of the American Express card holders, they’ll receive this money. So if you’ve got an American Express credit card then you can decide where you’d like your financial institution to invest their money.