Maman, en français, c'est La Reine des Neiges

“Maman, en français c'est la reine des neiges” [Mama, in French its the snow queen i.e. the name of the Frozen movie in French] proclaimed Poppette yesterday afternoon as she sat around a table with her young English friends singing 'Do you want to build a snowman' and generally getting giddy about the Disney Frozen movie.

Just a few words but so very telling.

Being totally honest and laying my cards on the table, I am at a stage where I am extremely grateful for these small reminders that my children can and do speak French this being despite me and my best efforts to sabbotage the whole thing. Seriously. Over the past two years I have been far from consistent. I take full responsibility as little by little more and more English conversations have sneaked into our life. Partly because of being so busy, partly due to tiredness and laziness and perhaps also a lack of conviction. I remember a chat I had a few months ago with Belgian Maman (those of you who have been following our adventure for a while will recall that Belgian Maman is native French speaker who speaks only English with her two little ones) during which she pointed out the problem I was having was that having allowed a little English to creep in now and again, over time this had snowballed and it had become to feel the norm. I should really be more aware of this as I do tend to have an all or nothing personality. Routine and consistency are key for me.

It seems to be fairly widely acknowledged within the bilingual community that bilingual life can be tiring and takes real commitment even when using ones native language. Going the non-native route is likely to be a little trickier now and again because it’s not just the commitment and consistency that you have to battle with, it’s the lack of words at certain times. I think that, because of this, I have perhaps slipped into letting myself off the hook a little. I’ve used it as an excuse to “cut myself some slack” when, in reality all I have been doing is allowing myself to wander further and further away from my goal.

Crazy.

I implore you not to do the same.

It is not too late for us to recover from this. I know this simply because my children have proved that even though I dropped the ball, they picked it up and ran with it for me.

There are millions of little moments that remind me that they can and do speak French and that they are proud to do so. Such as when they comment on a French story I have just read to them, or when they drop obscure French words into conversation that I may have only used with them once or twice previously, or when we are in the car and they play who knows the most French words, or when one of them proclaims, "Mama, I know how to speak French but X doesn't" or when they are watching French TV and repeat whatever they have just heard even though I would have sworn blind that they weren’t listening. There are so many of these little moments that wouldn’t arise had we not had this dream of a bilingual household.

There are other occasions, however, when there is some resistance. Poppette, for example now refuses to join in with her weekly French class at pre-school. This doesn’t worry me as I think that it’s a boredom issue (chatting about colours and animals and foods etc. each week) although I had hoped she would enjoy the group interaction and signing. She has also started to pretend not to understand something when she clearly does. I’m not sure what makes her do this. She asks questions like “What is cinq [five]?”. I don’t give in to it as I know she knows but it’s a reminder to me that I can’t get away with the lack of consistency in my approach to their language acquisition forever.

Already I know that had I been as consistent over the past two years as I had been over the first two years, then our current language environment would be different. That’s part of the reason for me stepping up to the keyboard today. To share the reality of where our non-native adventure is at the moment and also to set my stall out about where that adventure will lead us next.

In this vein, I came across a great book recently called “The One Thing” by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. The premise of the book is that you should choose the one thing in life (or in each area of life) that is of most importance to you and that every decision or choice you make is based on whether or not it brings you closer to that goal. All of a sudden you can begin to see how a myriad of small choices you are making daily serve no real purpose and in no way lead you where you want to be heading. It’s all about being more intentional.

In fact, there’s a great short story that Poppette loves right now that really grabbed my attention recently. It begins “Je suis une petite graine plantee dans la terre….” [I’m a little seed planted in the ground...”]. As I acted the story out with her, doing the actions to represent this tiny seed, uncoiling, growing and stretching towards the sun, I realised that this language that I am sharing with my children is like that little seed. If I water and nurture it, it will most likely become la plus belle fleur du monde [the most beautiful flower in the world] and if I neglect it, deprioritise it and use our majority language instead… that poor little grain is likely to wither and die.

What a shame that would be after four and a half years of effort from our little family.

Belfégor et l'orage and other (free) online story books

Goodness, it's been a long time since I sat down and tapped away here on my beloved blog and I have so many stories bustling around in my head dying to get out that today's post really should be about an altogether different subject.

It should be about the progress we're making on our bilingual adventure. It should be about the quirky, cute little sayings both Little Man and Poppette keep me endlessly entertained with. It should be about the bumps in the road that never seem to go away but still aren't big enough for me to throw in the towel.

So...that post will come and it will come soon. But for now, I want to leave you with a link to a set of super cute stories that you can listen to whilst looking at the pages of the book on your laptop, smartphone or tablet. My favourite is Belfégor et l'orage - the story of a little dragon who can no longer breathe fire...

Click here to access that story and twelve others.

Bonne lecture

Creating Opportunities for your Child's Language Development

I read an interesting article recently on a website called Playing With Words 365 which focussed on creating opportunities for your child to speak.

The main message is that we should wait... have a little patience... and let our children speak.

It's true to say that as parents, we often anticipate so many of our children's needs with the result being that they don't need to finish a sentence to get their needs met.

Reading this article opened my eyes quite a bit to that.

The article gives some useful and very simple tips such as moving things your child likes or needs a little out of their way or "accidentally" forgetting to do something like put their toys in the bath or zip up their coat so that they have to ask.

Most of the suggested tips are geared towards the very young child just learning to speak but the concepts can be easily translated to preschoolers and above. Really, the idea is about maximising the opportunity, space and time for dialogue during day to day life.

It just strikes me as a really simple idea that could have great benefits.

Raising Multilingual Children Blogging Carnival

I'm a little late to the party, but here's a link to April's "Raising Multilingual Children Blogging Carnival". April's theme is one I'm really keen to explore - how to teach mulitilingual children to read.

The carnival is being hosted by Adriana over at Homeschool Ways.

Click here to read more.

Poppette corrects Little Man's French

Poppette corrected Little Man's French last night.

I didn't know what to do first...(a) star jumps or (b) run for a pen and a scrap of paper before I forgot the details of their little exchange.

Guess what I went with lol

The conversation (which may lose a little in translation as the pronunciation is quite key here) went like this:

Little Man: "My chaussonzzz" (chaussons i.e.my slippers) - in French the 'S' here is silent but Little Man went all English on us and pronounced the 'S' :-)

Poppette: "No, they're 'chaussons'"

(She did this with a silent 'S' and in a pefect little French accent)

Swoon.

One happy mama.

Maman, Le Monsieur Tond Le Gazon

Something Poppette (aged 3 ½) said to me recently spurred me on immensely. We were lounging around in the garden on a sunny Sunday afternoon when we heard the sudden roar of the neighbour’s lawnmower.

“Maman” exclaimed Poppette “Le monsuier tond le gazon” (Mummy, the man is mowing the lawn). Seriously, this just ticks all the boxes. Not only had my daughter just spoken an entire, grammatically correct sentence to me in French but it was something so random and unexpected that it made me understand that she is just absorbing everything like a sponge.

Poppette’s language use at the moment can be summed up as being a real mix. She speaks English with English people, a mix of English and French with me and mainly English with Papa and Little Man with random bits of French thrown in. She very rarely uses full French sentences (although it appears that she can when she wants to). She comes out with things that surprise and impress me in equal measure.

I think the issue here is that I look at language acquisition from the perspective of a monolingual English speaker who learnt other languages through school etc and because of this, I have a subconscious sense that the words or grammatical structures I (and scores of my classmates) grappled with will also be tricky for her. This is not true. In reality, every French word is as easy or difficult as the next in the mind of a bilingual child or infant language learner. A word is just a word. A good example would be the fact that many English speakers struggle at first to differentiate between les chevaux (horses) and les cheveux (hair). Poppette proved to me that this is very much not the case for her recently as we drove past a field of horses and she exclaimed “Oh, des chevaux!” (oh, horses). She will never confuse the two. So the lesson here for me is that I need to stop projecting my weaknesses or concerns onto her and just continue to speak.

Little Man is also progressing in leaps and bounds. He has been a very chatty Little Man for a long time. By the age of 18 months he could put three (English) words together and has always had a really good understanding of the concepts of me and I etc which I think sometimes children don’t quite grasp at first. Now, at 25 months old, he chatters away quite merrily in both English and French although, in French he uses single words rather than sentences.

There are, in fact, some words that my children never say in English, at least, I’ve never heard them use the English word. Such as salon (living room), salle de jouets (play room), calîn (cuddle), essuie-tout (kitchen roll), linge (laundry), douche (shower) and serviette (towel). Also, there are a few terms that cause immense confusion when we have visitors... particularly the fact that Noddy is known as Oui-Oui (pronounced wee-wee in French) and he is Little Man’s favourite cartoon character... when Little Man wants the potty he tells us he wants to do a pipi.

So, I definitely feel things are moving along steadily in the right direction, DESPITE me having had the several wobbles over the past 12 months or so and DESPITE the fact that rather than speaking 100% French I speak more like 80% French with them right now and..... horror of horrors ..sometimes read books to them and sing to them in English too.

Back on the blogging horse

Wow, has it really been nearly five months since I wrote anything here on my beloved blog. Seriously, I can't believe it. Life has been a total whirlwind with my feet very rarely touching the floor for long enough for me to keep on top of everyday life, let alone indulge in the luxury of writing a blog post.

The last few times I wrote, I was most definitely feeling unsure as to whether I wanted to carry on speaking French with Poppette and Little Man. Knowing we were due a family holiday to France this August, however, I told myself that I would be a fool to stop before then as I ought at the very least give my children the opportunity to explore what they know (and, of course, show me and hopefully nip all my fears in the bud) whilst totally immersed.

I was right to wait.

Whoever spoke to Poppette, in what ever environment, be it in the local supermarket or pharmacy, the ticket lady on the merry-go-round, our French friends, our next door neighbours, she understood and spoke back to them. It was a crazy feeling to realise that my daughter (who will be 3 years old in less then two month's time) really speaks French and that, had I not pushed myself through the doubting and spoken to to her in French all this time, we would have arrived on holiday and she would have understood 'rien'! Likewise, for Little Man (now 17 months old) who, although he still only has a few French words in his spoken vocabulary, clearly understands French when it is spoken to him.

The holiday was amazing on many levels - I mean, put me in France and watch me float - just being there makes me happy. But to watch my children just fall into being a part of it all. Wow! Watching them play in French with our friends' two little boys (who are French and also French/ English bilinguals) was just brilliant... The game un, deux, trois soleil for one really seems to have stuck with both Poppette and Little Man who still cover their eyes every time they hear the words. Also, our friends spoke only French with my little ones which was priceless.

One day whilst in France, Poppette came to me and said "Maman, je veux manger" [Mummy, I would like something to eat] - until that point, she had always said "Maman, I want manger" so, in my eyes this was a huuuuge step..... the minority language immersion environment helped push the majority language out.

She's gone right back to saying "Maman, I want manger", now were home, but at least I know now that there are words in her head just waiting for the right opportunity to come back out and that this will be just the same with Little Man.

It's back to that old chestnut of just having faith. Believe it will work and it will. Keep working towards your goal. It's not always easy (far from it, at times, to be honest!!) but.... well, the proof is in the pudding.

June's Multilingual Blogging Carnival

Leanne over at All Done Monkey is hosting this month's raising multilingual children blogging carnival. The theme is all about multilingualism and travel and there are stacks of really interesting and informative posts.

Highly recommended reading!

Project Life: Capturing the Everyday

I've just discivered Project Life and I'm hooked!

For those of you who have not yet heard of Project Life, it's an idea originally created by Becky Higgins as a way to record your memories (both big and small) without the commitment often required to keep detailed journals or scrapbooks. It encourages you to print off the millions of photos that otherwise stay hidden on your hard drive or in your iPhone and to slip them into a book where you can peak at them whenever the desire takes you.

I can hear some of you saying, well, isn't that what a photo album is for?

Well, yes and no. Project Life encourages you to add notes and ephemera to build more than just a photographic memory.

Take a look at these blogs where seasoned Project Lifers can tell you (better than me) how it's done.

A Vegas Girl At Heart

Ali Edwards

Elise Blaha

Cathy Zielske

Rukristin Papercrafts (this post has links to over 100 Project Life resources broken down into the following categories: manufacturers, bloggers, organisation, challenges, free printables, miscellany and digital)

Anyway, the relevance of this to you guys is that I think Project Life is a great way to record language development and sound bites. All of those cute little phrases that come out of your children's mouths day after day. If you're like me, you scribble lots of them down but, most of them don't end up anywhere useful and will get lost in time.

I've been trying for half an hour to upload a photo of some examples of what i've been putting in my album so far but let's just say, it ain't working and i've given up before I throw my computer out of the window!

Two weeks in and I know already that this is the perfect way for me to document our life and build our memories ... and, believe me, it's not like I have the time to take on anything else....my life is one long to do list right now but, I'm squeezing it in where I can. It has already spurred me on to take photos of the 'little stuff' and to be more proactive in printing them off and it has made me think more about the tiny things that I don't want to forget. The things that build a picture of who we are but often get overshadowed by the bigger bits of life.

If i'm totally honest it has also allowed me to indulge in two other of my great life passions : Internet surfing (looking for freebie printables) and shopping (afterall, who can live without a corner cutter and a date stamp?).

I'd love to know if any of you guys are already doing Project Life or something similar, or if you are thinking about it.

P.S. Here's a link to my Project Life Pinterest board where I have collected lots of great free printable journalling cards etc

P.P.S The only place in the UK I have found so far that you can source Project Life stuff from is the Scrapbookers Inner Circle website. Although there are several other companies selling similar products.

No Mummy! Speak French!

I'm still really struggling with my own thoughts around carrying on with our bilingual endeavour. I'm pretty tired with all that's going on at work and at home so it doesn't leave huge amounts of time to sit and think all this through rationally! One thing I have decided though, is that I must keep going unless and until I decide to stop. By that I mean, it doesn't make sense to stop speaking French to my children whilst I grapple with whether or not to continue since, if I do plump for continuing, I will have wasted time and potentially confused my children into the bargain.

That said, I have let myself speak English on a few occasions with both children recently. Apart from the nagging pang of guilt that I am letting them and myself down, it actually feels pretty liberating!

However, Poppette (who is now 31 months old) really doesn't seem to like me speaking English with her.

In fact, she positively resists it.

On the few occasions over recent weeks where, for one reason or another, I have chosen to speak English with her she hasn't accepted it at all.

On one of those occasions, I needed to carefully explain to her why what she had done was wrong (as in why it was not good behaviour) and that she shouldn't do it again. I switched to English because of my own fears of not getting the message across right and not wanting to cock up the lesson for her.

Another time it was because she picked up an English language book at story time and, quite honestly, I just didn't have the energy to translate so I started reading in English.

This morning, it was because she asked me a question in English "What's that Mummy?" she said, pointing at a traffic sign. I had a blank... what on earth is traffic sign in French. eek... "It's a sign, baby", I said.

"Non, Maman! Parle en français" [No, Mummy! Speak French!] she demanded just as she had done on each previous occasion.

Obviously I'm pleased! I mean, even when she chooses to speak in English to me, she still wants and expects me to reply in French. I am rather astounded though.

I remember reading somewhere long ago, when I was first weighing up whether I dare embark on our non-native journey towards bilingualism, that bilingual children tend to identify people by the initial language they speak with them and can feel uncomfortable when that person changes language with them. I guess that in Poppette's mind, mummy equals French.

I've Hit a Big, Fat Brick Wall

Today I am not feeling very positive about speaking French with my children.

I have woken up questioning the whole thing.

It's really weird but I feel like I did way back in the early months when I started out speaking French to Poppette as a small baby.

Sometimes, I see mothers with children older than mine and I watch the interaction between them and listen to the things they chat about and the types of words they choose from their native language to have these discussions in.... and I wonder whether we will ever achieve that. Will I be able to teach my children about all the things I should teach them and all the extra things I want to teach them in my non-native language....Or not?

Should I speak English sometimes and what will the effect be? Interestingly, Poppette really pushes back if I try and speak English with her... (I will write a post about that later).

My two and a half year old daughter speaks French, my one year old son understands it and over the past two and a half years, we have built a mountain of French resources. This makes me feel that if I stop now everything will have been such a huge waste... but.... if it can't or won't work in the long term, is it better to cut and run?

Argh.

He Really Does Understand

Please pinch me.

Little Man (13 months) had a big weekend this weekend. He moved into his group 1, forward facing car seat and into his own bedroom all in one day and then he showed me that I should stop panicking about whether he hears enough French and just have some faith.

We were in the laundry room and he picked up a sock and showed it to me. I said "C'est une des chausettes de Papa. Tu lui la donnes?" [It's one of Papa's socks, are you going to give it to him?]... He literally turned on his toes and toddled off to give Papa his sock.

My heart swelled.

My Little Man. He's been listening to me babbling to him in French, absorbing the francophone conversations between his sister and me and watching Dans le Jardin des Rêves, Trotro, Bali, Grabouillon, Sam le Pompier et al and storing it all up.

Well done Little Man.

I'm so proud of you!

Raising Multilingual Children Carnival - April 2013

I'm really excited to see that the first ever Raising Multilingual Children Carnival is out!

The original Blogging on Bilingualism Carnival has come to an end as its organiser Letizia Quaranta is so busy with other commitments. Thank you Letizia, it's been an amazing journey.

I want to say a huge thank you to Annabelle of the Piri Piri Lexicon for setting up this new carnival so that we can each get our monthly fix! It takes a huge amount of work and commitment to organise and administer something like this and so many of us get so much benefit out if it.

This first carnival is being hosted over at Multilingual Mama....it focuses on 'lessons learned' and it's absolutely packed with great posts from our wonderful multilingual blogging community.

Enjoy!

Language Mixing & Code Switching

Poppette is now 30.5 months old and, the more her language skills develop and the more able she is to speak in full sentences, I notice her substituting words from one language for another.

I can't honestly say what influences her choice as, often times, she knows the appropriate word in both of her languages.

The interesting thing for me is how she always manages to construct grammatically correct sentences even when mixing the two languages together.

I want to capture these so I can look back and smile, so I'm going to add them to my "Poppette & Little Man" page.

A couple of cute examples are:-

Pas go au lit [Je ne veux pas aller au lit]

Don't want it, go au lit. [Je ne veux pas aller au lit]

Ça va très fast [Ça va très vite]

Ça move [Ça bouge]

She also has some cute language quirks where she uses the structure from one language when speaking the other such as calling orange juice 'juice orange' [jus d'orange] or like this morning when she proudly announced "I make big sleep" [j'ai fais gros dodo] i.e. I had a big sleep!

Non-Native Treasure Trove: Everything there is to know about the summer

I've just ordered a new book and am super excited!

It's called Tout sur l'été and, if I'm totally honest, it's more of a purchase for me than it is for les enfants!

In a bid to keep up with Poppette's knowledge thirsty mind and French language needs, I'm trying everything I can to increase my own vocabulary so I don't get caught on the hop quite so often.

This book sounds like the perfect antidote to that all too common brain freeze.



It looks at pretty much everything you can think of that relates to the summer season split into three sections :- animal life, nature and daily life.

It explains scientific stuff (using a little character called Loupiote who shares his knowledge comic strip style) e.g. Why is the weather warm in summer? What causes thunder storms? Why do stars shine in the night sky? Why is it important to protect bees?

It also covers topics such flowers, insects, fruits and vegetables, all from the angle of what happens to them in the summer months. What's it like up a mountain in the summer months? Or by the sea? Why do cows produce more milk in summer?

There are also poems, rhymes, recipes and activities for the children to get involved in to help with their discovery.

A serious gem of a find.

The icing on the cake is that this book forms a part of a series. Yep... guess who'll be coughing up for a copy of Tout sur l'automne and Tout sur le printemps when the seasons begin to change!

I'll let you know whether it lives up to the hype and to my expectations when it arrives!

Now all I have to do is find time to read it. Oh Lordy.

UPDATE : 2nd May 2013

My book arrived a couple of days ago and I'm not disappointed! It's everything I had hoped for.

Here's a few photos of what you can expect to find inside:

The Subjunctive and Other Delights

Poppette is now 30 months old and her grammar skills in both English and French are developing a pace. Each day she uses words and sentence structures that I have not heard her use before. Watching her learn to express her inner thoughts really is a marvel.

The subjunctive just keeps popping out of her mouth ...Yes! The subjunctive... so many French language students grapple with that throughout their studies..... and my two year old can use it correctly because learning a language from birth is clearly a fabulous way to learn.

Like many toddlers, Poppette is a real creature of habit and creates routines left right and centre. Her new rule is that, at bed time, she can’t go to sleep unless Maman or Papa lay beside her bed, on her flower mat, under a blanket and go to sleep too! I am determined to break this routine.... as it's starting to take longer and longer for her to actually go to sleep as distracted as she is by the novelty of having a roommate!

Last night, I laid down obediently and waited for her to drop off but she was shifting around and around for what seemed like forever.... So, I piped up "Tu fais quoi, ma princesse?" [what are you doing, my princess]. To which Poppette immediately retorted..."Chut Maman, il faut qu'on dorme. [Ne] parle pas!" [Shhh mummy, we've got to go to sleep. Don't talk!"]. A perfect little subjunctive! Of course I was so damned excited about the French grammar bit that I promptly forgot about the fact that it was 10pm, I was starving and essentially barricaded in my two year old's bedroom!

Little Man (12 months) is showing continued signs of understanding and has added a new word to his list "more". He hasn't said anything in French yet (apart from doudou, which he has now been saying for a couple of days). I live in hope that more French words will follow. I need more time with him. I feel like he hears so little French compared to the intensive English environment they provide him with at nursery.

My 29 Month Old Daughter Just Corrected My French!!!

Well, it was always going to happen. But so soon...... well, I wasn't quite expecting it just yet.

Poppette was just racing around the living room and fell over with an almightly clatter. She came running over to me clutching her elbow and we had the following exchange:

Poppette : Mal (hurt)

Me: Tu t'es fait mal à la coude?* (Did you hurt your elbow).

Poppette: Oui, mal au coude. (Yes hurt elbow).

It just shows how grammar is hardwired into a native speakers brain.

Obviously, I'm telling myself that I must have got the grammar right a million times before in order for Poppette to learn it in the first place .

Poppette the grammar teacher.

* For any of you that aren't French speakers, the word for elbow i.e. le coude is a masculine word ... I mistakenly made it feminine!

Language and My Little Man

Little Man is now eleven months old and is constantly "talking".

In and amongst his lovely baby chatter he has a selection of words, some of which he has been using for a good month or so and others which have just started to appear ... all English so far ... So,. it's time to start taking a note so I don't forget!

So far he says the following:

Mama
Papa
Nana
Grandad
There
Bye Bye

I've also heard him say yes and no but he doesn't use either regularly as yet.

People have actually been telling me for over a month now that they have heard Little Man say certain words but I haven’t always been there to hear them. I've been quite surprised really as I had a secret fear that he would start to speak late because I haven't felt that I have had the opportunity to talk him enough. It's not as easy with your second child as you just don't get the same amount of one on one time as you did with your first. Another whip to lash myself with... except for the fact that it turns out my worries were unfounded...Phew.

He definitely understands French. e.g.

Va chercher ton ballon [Go get your ball]
Assieds-toi [Sit down]
Tu veux manger? [Would you like something to eat?]
Viens ici [Come here]
Non! [No!]

Now I'm just hoping that my other worry i.e. the fact that I don't have huge amounts of time to speak French with him apart from on a weekend (and him being in English speaking nursery five days a week), won't be detrimental and stop him from speaking French. Friends have pointed out that, as he has heard me speaking to Poppette in French since he was born and also hears the French cartoons that Poppette watches etc, that he has quite a robust French environment so will be picking up more than I think.

Fingers crossed.

All Aboard the Language Rollercoaster

Raising bilingual children can be a real rollercoaster. I've heard countless stories of children refusing to speak their minority language for a whole host of reasons, not least because they just 'prefer' the majority language.

Sometimes things seem to be going so well that I feel like I'm flying...On the days where my language skills feel on point, when Little Man (11 months) shows me that he understands what I'm saying when I speak to him in French and when Poppette (28.5 months) chatters away with me in French, singing impromptu French nursery rhymes and repeating lines from her favourite French cartoons.

On other days, that same rollercoaster has me down in the doldrums... self critiquing my every spoken word and my accent and questioning the very reason we pursue this bilingual goal for our family.

Now that Poppette expresses her own opinions and desires more and more, this creates another language rollercoaster.....the big dip last week came one evening when she point blank refused to let me read to her in French - "Pas français, Maman. Anglais! Non! Anglais!".... I capitulated and then spent the next few days panicking that this was the beginning of some slippery slope which would culminate, somewhere down the line, in Poppette refusing to speak French.

Looking back with a more objective mind, perhaps it was just another case of her expressing her individuality and right to make a choice just like she does everyday when she refuses to eat whatever was her favoutire food the day before or to wear what was, until that point, her favourite t-shirt.

Who knows!

Since then we've been on an extraordinary up ! So much so that I've been having to pinch myself every now and again.

Poppette has been really upping her French with me to the point of about 95% of all our communications. She even comes bounding in from English speaking nursery and switches immediately into speaking to me in French.

The morning after her insistence upon an English story, Poppette was watching Jake et les Pirates du Pays Imaginaire (Jake and the Neverland Pirates) and exclaimed "Oh Oh Maman, Crochet a piqué le coquillage d'Issey" [Oh oh Mummy, Captain Hook has pinched Issey's shell"].... I breathed a sigh of relief that it may not all be over just yet and gave her a big old hug.

I was really quite amazed this weekend when Poppette, who was really quite ill with a sickness bug, still maintained her French with me. I would have expected her to perhaps slip into English.... possibly because that's what I wanted to do in the first instance. In fact, when she first became ill, I actually spoke to her for a few moments in English, just to satisfy myself that I knew what was going on and that she was ok. I don't think I need have bothered. She is quite capable of telling me (and often in full sentences these days) what's going on.

Another indication that Poppette really does understand the fact that she is surrounded by two languages came this weekend when I was reading Mireille l'Abeille (Thanks for the recommendation Tallulah) to her. She pointed at the words on the page, looked up at Papa and said (in English) "It's French look! Papa can't read it" :D





I have resolved to try and be less reactive to these ups and downs and to remember that everything is a phase and that just as it's not helpful to let the downs dent my confidence nor is it a great idea to let the highs make me complacent because as sure as eggs is eggs there will be more tests around the corner!

Non-Native Treasure Trove: La Vie de Mon Doudou

Poppette loves her doudou.

For her second birthday (a few months ago now but I’ve only just got around to writing this post) Papa and I thought it would be a great idea to buy her a book in which Doudou was the star attraction.

Step forward La Vie de Mon Doudou - a brilliant French website that creates books in French where either your child or their doudou are the main protagonist.

In the interests of total honesty, I definitely think that Papa and I rate the whole idea far higher than Poppette herself. She seemed a little sceptical about the fact that it really was her Doudou. We picked the jungle theme which shows Doudou frolicking with various jungle animals in their natural habitat. Poppette must, and quite rightly too, have wondered how on earth Doudou could have made such a trip when he is never away from her side.

It's not the cheapest of gifts....and I did find myself wondering if I couldn't have created something of similar quality myself with Photoshop and a little patience!!! Still, it’s definitely worth thinking about as a gift if you want something highly personalised and original and your Photoshop skills are as lacking as mine.