Chasing Butterflies Daily

This weekend it's midsummer. In Sweden it's a long day and night full of laughter, games, songs, eating and drinking - in many parts of the country the sun doesn't set at all, and where it does it's not for very long. Midsummer's Eve is a huge celebration for Swedes and also the time for lots of traditions. Many of them which are incredibly bizarre. Top two are: our midsummer pole and singing and dancing a song about frogs (små grodorna - the little frogs). I was approached by my eldest's beaver leader to teach the kids a game in Swedish, online of course as we are still in lockdown here in Scotland. But with midsummer looming I asked if it was ok to do a dance instead. This really is one of the most quintessentially Swedish traditions we have along with schnapps songs and smörgåsbords. The song talks about how funny frogs look and then sees children and adults alike imitate frog sounds and jump around. We have a lot of other songs for everyone to ge...

Our firstborn was a late speaker; I just put it down to her being brought up bilingual as I had heard plenty say that they often are later speakers as they have more to take in. I believe there are studies that have come out that suggest that it doesn't play into it (it certainly didn't slow down our second child's speech development), so it is probably far more down to how each individual child is built and processes things. Personally it didn't bother me too much, the exact reason wasn't so important to me in any case. The way I see it is that all babies and toddlers have so much to learn that they all prioritise different skills at different times. Our firstborn had great fine and gross motor skills for her age so I just thought the speech would come on it's own as and when she was ready. She definitely understood everything we said to her in both English and Swedish, so even if she couldn't respond verbally most of the time she made herself underst...