Billingualism

Miranda was born in Darlington, Co. Durham, to parents born in Sheffield and Wakefield. This makes her a genuine northerner. I am very proud of this. However, I really hope she doesn't end up with a Darlo accent!
I can't decide if i'd prefer that to her having a South African accent though, not that that is really likely. I just cannot get used to it. Carl's dad has this strange combination of Yorkshire with a strong Afrikaans twang. Alana, originally from Blythe in Newcastle sounds completely South African now, to the point of constantly referring to Carl's dad as 'Liz' not Les!! Karen is British born as Carl was, and her husband Shaun is from a German family, but you would never know it now. We were greeted with cries of "howzit boet?!" before being offered braai with 'brud' rolls and "lettuss", and before long even Carl had flattened his vowels and was talking about the British favourite of "fsh un chups".
Lindsay's eldest daughter, Olivia started jabbering away to us in Afrikaans until Lindsay firmly told her to speak English. Gerhard is Afrikaans born and bred, and he speaks it to the children at home, so it is easy for them to pick up. Over here too, kids have to learn both English and Afrikaans at school, so most stand a fairly good chance of growing up billingual. Olivia is being home schooled in both languages as she is not yet school aged (They very sensibly don't start school til they are 6 here). I can't teach Miri Afrikaans, although Carl can try, but I can speak to her in Spanish as best I can, and I hope she picks it up. Supposedly if she learns more than one language now, her brain is 'set' to be able to learn more in the future, and she won't find it as hard in later life to pick up other languages.

The 17th October was Olivia's 5th birthday, and we got her a kid's mini laptop with some little games with it. She absolutely loved it! Gerhard was a bit worried that she would turn into a computer addict and urged her to play outside instead, - a view I can agree with if he hadn't then started playing games on his mobile! But the laptop games are at least vaguely educational. One is a translator with silly games that should teach her a bit of Spanish. I hope to hear her speak a few words when we next see her! (which will probably be when she's 8 or 9, sadly!)
Miranda seemed to love seeing her cousins though; (technically they are her first-cousins-one-removed, I think.) Olivia is such a sweet little girl and really tried to play wth Miri, dancing her cuddly Pirate in front of her and so on. Abi wasn't quite sure what to make of her, I think, and they both stared in wonder at each other for quite a while. I got a few cuddles with Gabriel too but he is too small to take much notice of Miranda. The vast majority of the time he was asleep, feeding or being burped anyway. When I did hold him though, it felt so strange - I know Miranda must have felt like that a few short months ago, but he felt so tiny! It is amazing how quickly they grow and change.
I have really enjoyed being around so many small people and it is lovely to see Carl playing with them all so well. Maybe there will be more tiny cheeses in the future... The distant future, that is.