We came home from Sweden, my son started kindergarten, and soon thereafter he got his first cold of this year. Though it was to be expected, I had even anticipated it, it would have been nice to have a few more days to get life in order before turning our house into a sick bay. …
How our son has grown during our time in Sweden, and not just in size – I think we all felt it, his parents as well as his grandparents. He has become even more independent and also fully embraced a life where the spoken language is Swedish. Thinking about the years my son and I …
Halloween is a very popular holiday in Japan. A big part of fall is set aside for Halloween and in every store and every nursery and kindergarten there is an abundance of pumpkins and ghosts and bats and other decorations. So also at our son’s kindergarten where we went to a little Halloween party at …
Our son has only met his Swedish grandparents once, last summer when we went to Sweden. We stayed for a few weeks and he got to know them and play with them, and I believe he really came to love them. Fast forward nine months, a long time in the life of a quickly growing …
I am already behind my son in language skills. Almost every week he uses some Japanese word I do not know and I am sure he sooner rather than later will start to read faster than me too. In one area we are on the same level though, and that is when it comes to …
That children are innately creative I know, but I still almost every day marvel at our son’s way of creating and explaining the world around him, particularly so when it comes to languages. The other day our son woke up from his midday nap and started to speak English, talking about a white house and …
Our little family tries to surf in the rough sea of languages every day, the waves sometimes so violent that I fall of the surfing board and wash up on the shore all bruised. Especially so after a morning with my son at the playground. My wife and I speak Japanese and English, I speak …
Our son has started to walk. From one day being able to stand on his own to the next happily walking across the room with a toy in his hand – the speed of learning of a child is incredible. I wish I could mimic him as well as he is mimicking me – imagine …
Our son has really started to show an interest in learning new words, and he understands more and more – when I ask him if he wants to go out in the baby car, he gets really excited and starts to crawl towards the front door. When I tell him that we shall vacuum the …
Lagom is a very useful Swedish word. It means something like “just right” – not too much, not too little, actually not too anything, simply lagom. When my wife asked me tonight how much rice I want, I said lagom. When my wife asks me how big piece of birthday cake I want, I say …
Tonight it occurred to me that I am the only one speaking Swedish in our everyday life. It sounds silly when I put it like that, of course I have been very aware ever since I moved to Japan, and even more so after the corona pandemic made it difficult if not impossible to meet …