We Are Doing Fine

Hello dears! The time has gone so fast. Life is just way too fast too, many things happened, work, home, deals... We as well had really bad news about the demise of our family's (in Kazakhstan) best friend  in the early February. I was extremely saddened by this news, as so many childhood memories were linked to him and his family. I pray his soul rests in peace.
Just like everyone of you I suppose, I sometimes want to just stop and take a deep breath and reassure myself that everything is going to be just fine.
Well, let's see what we have been up to these days. Actually, nothing remarkable:) All the more enjoyable as little A is having vacations now and spending more time at home. So I have to invent various activities for him to keep him entertained (and busy too).
Here we did some yarn pasting, which in the end turned to a fun "yarn-spreading-all-over-the-drawing-room" activity, lol. Little A LOVES crafting a lot!

A couple of weeks ago we visited a garden and were surprised by the presence of the owls! Can you see its' round head and body? They were 2 or 3 of them, really cute, and little A was delighted to see real owls at last. So was I! Moreover, I never thought they lived in our hot climate here.

On weekends I usually take A out to the park. There we are free to do whatever comes in mind (after swings and slides of course).

Here is Little A's rainbow as he called when I asked what he drew on the sand :) Some school kids joined us for a spontaneous stone activity last weekend. The right most picture is what one of the boys made: sun and a flower. What made me especially happy is that the boys themselves came to us and started participating , gathering more pebbles, I could see they were very interested and curious.

When I get cravings of some homemade baked goodness, I start ... baking! So easy, nah? :)) I once again made the small apple crust pies.

 And just yesterday tried my hand on baked Indian samosas! All vegetarian :) They turned out really great this time, soft and tasty. Baked samosa recipe is from here.

I suppose that's all for today.. and oh yea! Forgot to say that we watched the Beauty and the Beast movie... I am still under its' spell! Such a beautiful movie, dynamic yet romantic... :) I can watch it again.

An Owl Pouch for Toffies

My son has a great attachment to his grandparents, which is so natural. While me and D are "bad bad always prohibiting everything and stopping him from doing anything he wants parents"! I believe though that grandparents contributed to my little A's  sweet tooth development. But if I think more, it couldn't have been any other way when his dad can never resist a bite of chocolate or some Indian sweets whenever offered (or not offered, and he grabs them himself :))
A's recent obsession - toffees of different kinds (in wraps). He might not eat them but will be carrying around the house everywhere, eventually losing them and asking me where have they all gone. What's more, yesterday he didn't want to fall asleep until I put two little toffees in his hand! Hence, to ensure he always has his favourites in one place and won't be dropping them here and there, I crocheted this super easy owl pouch, and EVEN inserted a lining made of an old T-shirt.

It seems to be very handy, and little A loves wearing bags too (often wears a similar cross shoulder pouch of mine which is too long for him). The days have become colder in Chandigarh, we wear sweaters and socks at home and sleep under thick quilts at night. This might have promoted my wish to crochet cozy little things. My A enjoys wrapping up himself in various blankets and not resisting to wear sweaters and socks anymore.

One more owl to our collection, this time, a useful one. I can improve the pattern and make it in bigger sizes with a zipper or any other type of lock. Attaching the lining was not that difficult and scary (lol) but rather interesting.

Here are our owl-y wishes of a warm and welcoming home for you to have and to live in! Blessed be!

Summer Things

Hello friends! That's right - we have no spring in here, but Summer right away... it has got really really hot already, up to +28! It's not a joke because now it will start getting only hotter. Nevertheless we cannot skip doing our daily deals, right?
Last weekend we as usually took a walk in the garden - a Terrace garden this time for our little A to enjoy new surroundings. He is FOND of the stairs and steps! As soon as he sees them anywhere he wants to climb up and down... We are very careful to choose places where he can do it safely. Under our supervision of course.

The garden had many most bright and cute flowers! As usual I don't know their names...

 This is the longest flower bed there... loved how it stretches further...

We stopped to take photos of this tree somewhere on the way; it has no leaves but huge red flowers! I am wondering what fruits it might give? These trees are everywhere in the city now.

Besides wandering around, I try to be productive on a crafty front. Here is what I put in my To accomplish list - a Waffle stitch dining set for little A. I am using tutorial by Kathleen of Miss Abigail's Hope Chest. Loved this stitch, and wanted to learn it after seeing on Sangeetha's post.

Also as we had bought a 3 in 1 microwave oven, I now can bake! Yey! Here are my latest oatmeal, flour, atta, ginger and turmeric muffins. I am glad that baking products and equipment became available in India in recent years. One can afford them easily as well.

This is pretty much it for today... I aim to finish pending projects in nearest future and start new ones as soon as possible. Thank you for all the comments and sharing of your experience on raising a child in many languages. Next post will try to make on what toddler activities I could incorporate in A's routine, and what didn't work for us. Still working on creating a quiet book for him and busy bags for a future trip home.

Have a wonderful day!

Bringing up a Multilingual Child

Back on track about how it is actually to bring up a child in a multilingual family, in our case Russian-Hindi-English-a little bit Punjabi... now that's enough I think.

Russian language 

Long before my little A was born I decided that I would speak only Russian and would make it a language of communication at least between two of us. I have been speaking Russian with him since then, mixing it with English words here and there on the way (like ешь it - eat this).
However communication alone will not suffice for him to learn my mother tongue. Written word is also very important so that he sees the Russian language around, its usage, and understands that this language has equal rights with others. For that purpose I always keep a calendar on the wall which is usually given by my parents every year.
Little A has his own backpack, gifted by my Lebanese friend, in which we store all the books. Every day little A brings  this precious bag of books, and we start reading, he comments, points at the pictures, asks to turn the page or not to...
My parents provided many books for A, so we don't have lack of Cyrillic written words.Some of them were gifted by our friend from Moscow, who also has an Indian husband and two kids. So she knows how it is raising children in a mixed family. She brought most popular children authors of all times A. Barto  (А. Барто), S. Marshak (С. Маршак) and K.Tchukovsky (К.Чуковский).

S. Marshak poems and tales for children

Agniya Barto, poems for children. (Агния Барто, Стихи для детей)

"Hare", one of the most known short poems by A. Barto.

                                             

"Elephant" ("Слон")

He loves seeing pictures in the book by K. Tchukovsky (К. Чуковский) "Wash'em clean" "Мойдодыр" - it's a book about a boy who was so dirty that all his belongings ran away from him.. so in order to gain them back he had to take a good bath :D

He absolutely loves a little book  called Сорока-сорока (Magpie-magpie). This is a folklore nursery rhyme which you say to a child while making circles on his palm, and then press each finger tip as the story goes... He tries to do this with my hand too :)

 I read him this alphabet book too, and he repeats A, О, У vowels :)

There are as well folktales, fairy tales, poems available for little A, and many good reads are with my parents, and  I can't wait to introduce my little boy to them.

I show him Russian cartoons from time to time too, like Domovyonok Kuzya (a Hob?), so he hears the speech not only from me. Many of my friends who live in India say that it is difficult to inculcate your language when the environment is not there. But as soon as I don't have an option of staying in my country, I shall use other means in order to make it happen. I need to put an effort.
So as you see his exposure to Russian language is limited to my speech, books, cartoons, and Skype with his grand parents. I am not going to overburden him with it, but just wanting to lit up interest in his mother's tongue. My D however is learning Russian now and is on his second year at the University, so I expect a little help from him too :)

English language

English makes a big entry in our day to day communication.
Among the books introduced to A is his favourite Little Red Riding Hood, which I purchased in the bookstore because of its illustrations. It was long before little A was born, but I knew it right there then that it was going to be for my baby.

This one is an old Indian edition of short stories found among many old books my in-laws keep with them. The stories are too long for my A, and have slightly strange plots to my liking.

 Moreover his exposure to English language will increase when he goes to school, as mostly all the playschool programs here are in English, just like the one I used to work for. Hence I don't have much worry for this language, he will definitely learn it.

Hindi language.

Absolutely everywhere. Speech at home and outside, children's TV channels ...BUT little A has no Hindi books as of now, only newspapers, in which he likes to point at the words written in Devanagari. Beside,s of course, little A will be learning it at school.

Punjabi language

Exposure is very limited to occasional conversations by my in-laws. D doesn't speak Punjabi at home, but only when it is required. However this language is taught in many schools here in UT.
I know I take sides - I wrote the most about Russian :P ))) However aiming to bring my A up with the knowledge of three languages I would not like to enforce any of them but implement in such a way that he enjoys this unique opportunity and uses it later in life effortlessly.
Until Little A starts speaking we won;t get to know which one of the languages he would prefer, but just recently he started trying to say the word "bird" in Russian (ptica "птица").. Yey!!! I win! lol

Have a nice day! Just one more day left, and we can enjoy our weekend :)