Nappy Dance

I’ve decided to set myself the deadline of writing something – a paragraph at least about Edith’s development every month. It seems she is developing and changing so fast and that the discipline of writing will help me to try and save a memory or a moment regularly.

When Edith was born the community nurse gave us a red book where her weight, 

measurements, and developmental information will all be placed throughout her childhood. One of the pages in the book has illustrations of some of your child’s developmental milestones, and next to the illustrations you can write the age when they first did this thing. Seeing all these changes taking place is a matter of observation, we’ve spent much time discussing the first time we saw Edith lift her neck  fully or the first time she smiled. But the other half of observation is speculation about what we are seeing, how are we to read and interpret the gestures and sounds that Edith makes. Are we right to see them as Edith exhibiting emotions similar to ours, or could we be misinterpreting them?  How similar, or how different is Edith’s world to ours?

I come home and often change Edith’s nappy to give Amy a rest. Edith initially hated having her nappy changed but now she seems to enjoy it, particularly when she can kick and throw her arms around freed from her nappy. This seems to be a time of day when she experiments with movement and with language as well. Cooing, clicking and testing intonations, rolling the tongue around in her mouth, responding to me singing to her, moving my face closer and further away from hers. This is the most exciting time for me, seeing her experimenting and playing with the possibilities of communication. Language seems to bubble up almost unheeded from her.  It combines with a whirlwind of kicks and waves in an energetic horizontal dance. 

Our first week with Edith

                  

                        Our first photo of Edith 

Let me introduce you to Edith - my daughter - born just a couple of days ago on the 25th of November at 17.17. As she emerged into the world she made a good healthy wail. I remember this clearly as I was sitting on an old hospital chair in a corridor outside the operating theatre. Sadly, at the last minute my wife needed an emergency c-section meaning I couldn't be in the room when the doctors birthed the child, but I certainly heard the moment. 

As a language teacher, and a dad, I'm so excited to see and describe how Edith's abilities will develop and how she will learn in the coming years. But the cry, the most simple form of communication, is not something she learnt - it was just a reflex response to the oxygen flooding into tiny lungs for the first time. 

Now - just a few days later Edith is doing great and my wife, Amy is recovering really well. And in the first five days we have learned plenty - how to minimise the spread of poo-ey nappy mess and how to try and comfort an inconsolable baby in the early hours of the morning. 

When I was trying to do this at 4am the other night I decided to offer baby a surrogate teat by placing my finger in her mouth. And while she isn't able to do much with any motor control yet. she can certainly synchronize her tongue, her lips and her jaw to create an impressive suction. 

Was she able to do this immediately? Or is this the first thing that a child learns to do? Well, babies do suck their thumbs in the womb, as if in preparation for their first meal. But Amy reckons that little Edie is now able to latch on - to get her mouth nice and open and generally get down to the important business of feeding much more efficiently than she was able to just a few days ago. 

The tongue, the lips, the jaw and probably the roof of the mouth. These are the first things we learn to use in an accurate and efficient way. Seeing this happen makes me think about these separate parts of the body harmonise so well to aid the function of so many different systems: respiratory, digestive, then slowly but surely they are trained to become the key members of the communicative system. And perhaps this is happening already - Even since I wrote this a few days ago Edith's vocabulary of squeaks and gurgles is already a tiny bit more nuanced. Anyway, I have to go.  Edith has just pooped. 

Libre circulation

Je prepare une presentation pour ma classe, sur la libre circulation de gens dans l’UE. –

But during the presentation I find that I stumble on every word. I revert to my weird Spanish / French pronunciation.

So to focus on pronunciation Amy reads it back to me with a more accurate pronunciation. Concentrating on the /ʒən/ for example, I repeat, bouncing the phrases back and forth.

I start to repeat the following phrase 'sont foux, completement foux' avec expression - with gesture  - and suddenly I find myself adopting a pronunciation poise. 

That a position with the neck, the mouth, the tongue and the throat. It's not me, not English David anyway. The pace of delivery is different – and perhaps it’s a bad parody of a French accent. But at least it’s not English. Adrian Underhill talks about this he says that as babies we explore the musculature of pronunciation. in this video. More about this soon I hope...

Adrian Underhill - Pronunciation is Physical Video

Lord of the Gap

A graded reader to get me reading and absorbing more french - Arthur Bernéde's 1927 Polar.

As usual I enjoy the feel of moving across familiar phrases in french but quickly lose the thread of the plot.

So looking on-line to cheat a bit on the story I find that a belphégor is a demon who helps people making discoveries.

His name 'the lord of the gap' makes him, for me, a strangely symbolic language learning companion.