bringing up multilingual

Being a mixed couple, we want our daughter to acquire both our native languages plus English, of course. While we don't expect her to utter all 3 languages by the time she can speak, we're very determined and will do our best to help her be multilingual.

I speak mostly English to Naila and some Malay and French at times, while her papa speaks in French and English. At the moment, she's exposed to a lot of French but she'll surely catch up on the other two once we're in Sin. I've read up a bit on this subject and as for every action, there's a reaction. This site is a good read on this matter.

After 4 years here, my understanding of the native language has markedly improved. Although I don't speak the language fluently, I can nonetheless spew sentences here and there under the circumstances. Suffice to say, I can go on my way alone here. I'm afraid I might lose touch with the language once we're out of this country. Well I just have to make the effort to keep up with it to better help Naila be mutilingual.

Lets hope she won't have language overload, turn to us one day to say this:

me back here

Finally found the time, energy and mind for some updates here. Been mostly busy, part lazy, got a couple of rude visits from the winter bug and was in no-blogging mood of late. So to my regular readers, mi scuzi.

So what's been brewing over here...

- Went to the in-laws last weekend for the last time before our move. Naila will be greatly missed by her Mamie and Papy and Tonton Nix but hey, c'est la vie, quoi. There're choices to be made (at times not easy), dreams to fulfill. You can't always have your cheese and eat it too. And thanks to the ever evolving technology, the world is a much smaller place.

- Naila has her double nationality now... she's a umm Frenchyporean?.. yeah, well she'll be that for the next 21 years at least. It's a great thing cause she has the advantage of both worlds. She's a fortunate girl indeed.

- The apartment is now about 3/4 empty. We've packed away stuff like books, clothes, bric-a-brac. It was a real chore organizing what to pack/to throw/to give away. I've never liked packing things but it has to be done and we still have a lot to do... bordel!

Wokay end of updates.

Here's a little video of Naila exploring the wonderful world of thumb-finger-fist sucking:

ticket to ride

We've recently collected Naila's French ID and passport.. so she's a recognized French citizen now. Our girl is entitled to double citizenship until she reaches 21, after which she'll have to drop one of the two citizenships. We've already applied for her Singapore citizenship and passport and are waiting for the response which we'll normally get in about a month's time.

I didn't realize that taking an ID photo of a baby can be quite a challenging task. If it takes just a few minutes for an adult to have his ID photo taken, it took us about half an hour to get Naila's done. Well it probably wasn't a good idea to feed her just before leaving home cause full tummy plus cool air plus brisk walk lulled her to sleep really quick and every attempt to rouse her failed - from gentle shaking to tickling to the blaring toot from a squeeze toy - as she was really in deep sleep. So we waited for a while, all the time tickling her everywhere until she finally opened her eyes.. good thing she didn't cry, once awaken.

One of the most brain-draining part of our move is having to settle all the paperworks. Thank goodness hubby is a great organizer and very meticulous with stuff like that. Well we have 2 more months to get everything in order before making our grand depart from the French soil.

publicité

Went to Big Bro's site and saw the video of the car accident he put up there and it reminds me of a commercial on road safety shown on French tv a while back... dunno if it's shown anywhere else. I must warn you that it's pretty brutal and shocking..

What it said:
- This day, he drove way too fast.
- And he drove just a little too fast.
- Always respect the speed limit.

strike a pose

During my hospital stay, I had a lot of people coming into my room - midwives, nurses, visitors, cleaners.. and a photographer.. yep. So this woman came in introducing herself and explaining her presence there.. that her company propose to take photographs of the baby and the mother while in the hospital, without any obligation to buy the pictures thereafter. Last week, someone came over to show us the album with all the pictures taken (there're 13 pics in total). I was thinking maybe we could browse first and then choose some but the hubby jumped in and closed the deal, buying the whole album which cost 155€.. okaayy.

Indeed, it's a smart business move - going around the maternity, spending 15 minutes in each room taking photographs of babies and mothers, knowing very well that they'll eventually squeeze some cash out of each couple especially from new parents who wouldn't resist the professionally done photographs of their cute little ones.

our weekend

Going to the in-laws now means a lot more packing to do and longer hours on the road. Naila had her first cross-country trip when we visited the in-laws over the weekend. We took 5 hours to reach there instead of the usual 4.. we had to make stops along the way to feed her and change her and to let her loosen her limbs a bit cause I can imagine it mustn't be all that comfortable slump up in the baby car seat like that at a long stretch. Well she didn't make a big fuss during the trip to and fro, so it was fine.

We visited the grandparents and Naila was properly introduced to them. Our baby got all the attention any baby could ask for during our stay there and was very much pampered by her tonton Nix (a.k.a Anthony - Stéphane's younger brother). The most frequent phrase uttered during our weekend trip was "Qu'est-ce qu'elle est belle!", meaning "She's so pretty!" - referring of course, to Naila.. NOT ME.. heh

my first outing...

...was a cool one. Yep, Naila had her first trip downtown yesterday. The weather was fine and the temperature was merciful. We didn't know that the winter sales came earlier this year and weren't expecting much crowd but the stores were thick with people. So we didn't linger for long to minimize the risk of the baby catching any microbes running wild in the air.

Well the purpose of our trip downtown was to get a girdle for meself. While I'm in no hurry to shed the excess weight I've put on, I'd like to get a grip on my tummy before gravity pulls it down till the point of no return. I do hope though that I'll drop down to my pre-pregnancy weight within a couple of months. Lets see.. total weight gain during pregnancy was 14 kg which wasn't that far off from the recommended weight gain. I've lost 8 kg after the birth which leaves me 6 extra kilos to burn... and this will be the good time to pump back some life into the stepper which has been long ignored and forgotten.. hee

So our baby turns 1 month today and she has been a constant joy to us. One month into parenthood and we're coping pretty well though there were some hiccups along the way but we've ironed that out. The hardest for me I guess, is the lack of sleep... lack of sleep plus crying baby makes Julie a tired and crabby mama. Hubby helps a lot around the apartment.. in fact, he does most of the cleaning while I deal with the laundry and cooking - I have to resume cooking now cause we couldn't eat from the box all the time. So my days are pretty occupied.. no more long hours on the computer and no more video games! (for now :)

Happy 1 month petite princesse! We love you so!

Oh, we let Naila explore her playgym for the first time today and she loves it!