Baby sister's 3 months old - beware: a long post

Time flies with 2 kids. L. is already 3 months old and loads have been going on. In this post I'll try to focus on her development and what I do with her in English though it'll be hard.

First of all, some parametres:

She is 57 cms "tall", 5.23 kgs. Her eyes are still blue. Her hair is light brown (showing tinges of ginger) and getting longer in the back and started to grow in the front. She only sleeps on Mommy or Daddy, or in the sling. She can't push herself up while on her tummy but can lift and turn her head nicely. She's got her first 2 shots at the age of 2 months. She gurgles and babbles a lot. She's smiley if her tummy is full, on the changing table or when she can look around. Though she's got a stomach ache quite often mostly in the evenings then she cries desperately. She's breastfed and I can see white lines on her lower gum so the crying might be caused by the staring of her teething.


English time:

The routine is the same as it was with E. I just started it earlier (at her birth) with L. Whenever we are just the two of us I speak English to her. I've already introduced the little song we always sing with E. before changing languages (showing the Makaton signs to L. as well):

Hello, hello how are you?
Hello, hello, it's good to see you.
I say hello, I'm happy that you came
I say hello, please tell me, please tell me, please tell me your name
Mommy (pointing at me)
L. (pointing at her)

(This song is -or rather used to be- the theme song of a BBC series Something Special. On the link you can listen to the new version of it. But you can use any song of your choice if you want to signal the beginning or the end of the language usage)

So what we do in English:

1. Lullabies

It seems I sing continuously. Whenever I try to rock L. to sleep I sing the following lullabies:

Rock-a-by baby

Hush little baby

Go to sleep lullabies (Go to sleep, Moonlight so sweet and pale, Golden slumbers)

You are my sunshine

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

Sweet dreams

Row row row your boat

Lavender's green dilly dilly

(This last one I used to sing to E. ALL THE TIME. You can check out a less detailed post about E.'s first 6 months)

2. Changing table fun:

When I need to change L.'s nappy or clothes (and we are in English) I start with this rhyme:

.... (child' name) 's got a dirty nappy.
What shall we do? What shall we do?

Clean is up, clean it up
For Mommy, and for you.

When her legs are free from clothes I make her little feet march:

Oh, the grand old Duke of York

(I march with her feet) Oh, the grand old Duke of York,
He had ten thousand men,
He marched them up to the top of (Lift her feet up) the hill
and he marched them down again. (Put her feet down)

And when they were up they were up. (Lift her feet up)
And when they were down they were down. (Put her feet down)
And when they were only half way up, (Wiggle her legs)
They were neither up nor down.
(When I sing UP I lift her feet up, and when I sing down I put her feet down)

I go through her body parts with this song from the BBC series Something Special- Baby episode (The song starts at 4.03 mins in the video but it's worth watching the whole episode)

Two little eyes that open and close

Right in the middle a little nose

Two little ears on either side

one little mouth that opens wide

That's baby (2x)

Two little legs that kick and wiggle

Two little feet that like a tickle

Two little arms that stretch up high

Two little hand that wave goodbye

That's baby (2x)

The other thing she likes is tickling under her chin (or rather double chin *grin*). I chant these two rhymes:

Round and round the garden (stroking her tummy in a circle)

Like a Teddy Bear (showing the teddy bear sign)
One step, two steps (walking my fingers on her tummy)

Tickle you under there (tickle her under the chin)

Another variation can be you do the circling in the palm, the walking movement up the arm and tickle the armpit in the end

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake baker's man (patting the tummy)
Bake me a cake as fast as you can (patting faster)

Pat it and prick it and mark it with B (patting/rolling movements on tummy, forming a B with fingers)

Put it in the oven for baby and me. (2 palms up as if putting a tray in the oven, when saying BABY I tickle her tummy)

If you want to sing a tune here it is.

And finally 2 finger plays:

1. This little piggy went to market
This little piggy went to market
This little piggy stayed at home
This little piggy had roast beef
This little piggy had none
And this llittle piggy cried wee wee wee wee wee all the way home

Have a look at a video of This little piggy by Patty Shukla:

2. Two little dickie birds sitting on the wall

Two little dickie birds sitting on a wall
One named Peter the other named Paul
Fly away Peter, fly away Paul
Come back Peter, come back Paul.

Here is a video about what to do with your fingers:

3. Bath-time

As for bath-time I have a great helper apart from Daddy and that is L.'s big sister, E. She helps taking off L.'s clothes, 

prepares what we can put on her afterwards, checks and throws the nappy into the bin, helps with the splashing too :)

Great practice for E. and L. hears not only me but her big sister talk in English. Sometimes we play the changing table games together again before bath-time.

One day E. sang a song for her little sister while I was busy with something and Daddy was preparing E.'s bath (that's the noise in the background)

-----Oh, no! I can't find the video anywhere :( As soon as I find it I'll put it on--------

They're just too cute.

----- 23/07/2016 I found the video :D -------

4. Books

Baby books, of course. Black and white board books, cloth books or touch and feely books. 

Sometimes she just looks at the books while in the playpen/on the play mat and at other times I describe what she sees or tells her a story around the characters on the pages.  I'm working on a short list of useful and fun baby books you can read about in the next post.

5. Baby's Best Start

When L. has some tummy time or just looking around in her playpen I put on Baby's Best Start Helen Doron CD about once a day. I'm not showing to her anything (no pictures, no soft toys, nothing) she just getting familiar with the music. I'm planning to start the course with L. soon, maybe September. (And I think we should restart with E. as well.)

From birth to the 6th month

As I have already mentioned, my determination to raise a bilingual child wasn't strong at the very beginning.

I did it half-heartedly after E.'s birth. I was singing a lot to E., who really enjoyed it, more than the Hungarian songs. She calmed down more quickly when I sang two of the songs:

Lavender's blue dilly, dilly

and Hush little baby.

So there was time when she couldn't calm down and I was singing these two songs for 30-40 minutes without any break. (Repetition is a key factor if we are talking about language acquisition at an early age)

During this first period I started to read books on the topic: Make your child multilingual by Silke Rehman

and 7 Steps to Raising a Bilingual Child by Naomi Steiner

and I found both of the books very supporting and practical, still they don't deal much with a totally monolingual environment, where the second 'mother tongue' is a learnt language for the parents, and it's the parents decision to raise the child bilingual. They mainly focus on mixed marriages, where one parent speaks a language and the other speaks a different one, or monolingual families living abroad and the country's language is the dominating one. Both books discuss more or less the same topics focusing on determination of the parents, the consistency and a flexible plan. I do not want to go into details and give a review as I'd like to concentrate on what we actually do in our everyday life, but definitely these two books were really good theoretical and practical basis.

Much to my surprise I've found 2 books on the topic in Hungarian:

Again there will be no review of the books above. They are pretty useful readings for those in the same shoes although one is better than the other. Still, both are worth reading and collecting practical ideas how to manage life if you wish to raise a bilingual child or just want to introduce a second language in your home.

The authors of all four books emphasise the TIME factor a lot; how much time is spent on the languages. They recommend 30-40 percent of the child's day to be spent on the minor language, which is English in our case.

So I "wasted" the first 6 months. If I could start it again I would speak English to E. from the very beginning in a natural way as in Hungarian, but I did not. So she heard natural spoken English every now and then for 6 months. The positive side of it is regularity, which is also a very crucial factor. Every day I sang songs for her or told her rhymes no matter how our days were going.

Around the 3rd month we started to watch videos on youtube, though only for 2-5 minutes per day. I know there are a lot of different views on the topic (whether to let a baby watch moving images at this early age or not, but I found 5 minutes per day won't do any harm. According to some viewpoints, moving images have a bad effect on the child's brain, imagination).
She liked watching these videos so slowly we increased the time for 10 minutes per day until the end of the 6 months.

The following videos were and still are her favourites by KidsTV123:
The Animal Sound Song
The Shape Song
Red Rabbit Green Gorilla
Phonic song
Twinkle, twinkle little star

Of course, the list has grown by now.

We usually watched the videos 2 or 3 times a day for 5 minutes each occasion. When E. got whiny it was a great way to refresh her, or keep her busy when she was a little bored. From one week to the other she enjoyed it more and started to smile at the characters. She also recognised the song when the first image came up or the song began.

In this period my main focus was on fun and regularity. We didn't overdo it, just enjoyed being with E. and see how her intellect opens up.