One week in Stockholm

The plane got thoroughly de-iced as efficiently as they can only do in Stockholm, while the ten snow plows, neatly lined up in parallel with adequate breaking distance of each other, cleared the runway ahead of us. The smell of fuel and distilled alcohol seeped through to the cabin, making me cough. All of this orchestrated well enough for us to make it safely to the big Apple. My mind wandered back to earlier that morning as I woke up next to my sweet daughter sleeping with her leg on my belly. I had to wrap her in the duvet while hitting the shower at 5:45am before waking her up half an hour later. Zoe-bee, I called, it's time to wake up. She mumbled half-asleep and I took her up on my lap to get her to wake up quicker, stroking her hair. "Mor, I don't want you to..." was all she could say because she was so sleepy but also knew that this was our last morning after a wonderful week together. I kissed her cheeks and held her close while reminding myself just how many things we had managed. We had been at two museums, seeing five of our friends in different capacities and read a full chapter book over the five evenings. We had eaten breakfast together, she had drawn several drawings of the two of us and we had danced to music in a friend's apartment with actual floorspace. We had played in the snow and she had hit me with more snowballs than I could count. But now it was time for us to part again, this time for 6 weeks. I would be dropping her off as the first one in daycare, then haul my suitcase out to the airport and take off for New York. I had work to get back to and she had her dad to get back to. "Mor, can I not go with you?", she said, still half asleep while pulling her shirt over her head. She knew the answer, but I assured her that I wanted nothing more and that we could talk every night. She could call me and say goodnight if she wanted. I would call her and read her stories.

Zoe in the Nordiska Museum

Two things happened this week that I made a note of in terms of Zoe and her identity. The last night while having dinner we started talking about something that has always confused Zoe: Where are you from. So far she has simply dodged the question by answering "I don't know", which I thought was bad, but she tells me that she simply doesn't know, it's just a fact. But more recently, probably because in New York her and I are distinctly Danish (we have our own language), she started explicitly identifying as Danish. At dinner she was surprised to learn that one of the people were Swedish, perhaps because he has always spoken English to her and she is used to Swedes speaking Swedish and her just not engaging (see next paragraph). She volunteered with a "I'm Danish" and I acknowledgingly  said Yes, and what else? She looked at me puzzled. "Just Danish from my mom" she said and when I reminded her she was also British she just repeated it. "No, I'm just Danish from my mom". I didn't want to push it but I was surprised because I have always tried to emphasize all of her multicultural heritage, that she was born in the US and should be proud to be a US citizen, but that she is British from her dad and Danish from her mom.

The view from my bedroom

The second interesting thing, I realized in the Nordiska museum's play area where a few Swedish children started talking to her. According to her dad and from talking to the daycare my impression was that she spoke quite a bit of Swedish. They keep emphasizing this, but I was very surprised to see her being clueless when the kids talked to her. She went back to me and asked how to say particular sentences. I told her but when she returned to the children she had forgotten. She came back to me very frustrated and asked me to help out. I did for a bit but she was not able to really interact with them. It all reminded me of when my family and I (8 years old) went on summer holiday to Sweden and I tried to play with kids on the playground; I thought they were just trying to steal my little toys because I did not understand what they were saying. Fact is that Zoe still does not speak Swedish.

Eight hours and forty minutes after de-icing, I landed in Newark to a clear view of Manhattan and particularly my beloved Empire State Building. That night it lit up in Orange and Pink as to welcome me back. My mom texted me briefly saying that I was probably happy to be home. I am.

Accents

I asked Zoe to look in the fridge to find out what we were going to have for dinner. She pulled out some (cooked yesterday) rice and salmon as well as some soy sauce. She then pulled over a chair so she could reach the stove. "Mom, you have to turn it on, but I'll make the rice" she said. I complied. "So I'm the boss cook and you are my assistant", she continued and asked me where the cook book was. I pointed over at the other counter and she brought it over, opened it up at a random page and started reading. "First you put the rice in, then water and then it has to cook for 6 minutes", she said, as she meticulously pointed her finger underneath the letters. Nevermind the fact that she can't read anything but her name yet. "I have an idea Mom, let's be American cooks!" she said and switched seamlessly to English (so far everything had been in Danish). I followed her lead and while stirring the rice and cutting out salmon she started talking with the most amazing Southern, American accent. I had no idea she even knew a Southern accent. Her default accent in English is an adorable Scottish/Irish*/British/Danish accent and since I rarely hear her speak English, I don't really notice it unless someone points it out. All I know is that she is completely fluent and mainly mix English words into her Danish, not so much vice versa. But she had it all down with the American drooling "Ain't that a shame" when she spilled soy sauce and "We don't need no butter", when I took it out to look for something else. I resisted the temptation to go find my phone and record it because it would take the presence out of it all. In the end we set the table with an extra chair for her doll ("the restaurant guest") and she spent most our meal telling me how we would soon have to go out and tell everybody who had lined up in front of the door, all the way down the hall and all the way down the stairs, that we didn't have more food and that they had to come back to the restaurant another day. But she really didn't want to disappoint them all. Still in her perfect Southern accent.

*Her best friend in her daycare in Stockholm was an Irish girl, but she went back to Ireland after the summer

Bilingual magic

As most parents must realize sometimes, I occasionally look at Zoe and cannot believe she is already 3 and a half. I cannot believe I have such a sweet, funny, clever daughter who is as easygoing as she is. And I cannot believe that she can talk so much when it was just yesterday when all she could say was 'ma ma' (which meant both milk and mom). But what I also find myself astonished of is her bilingualism and improvement of language every single day, something that might be less common. The most impressive thing to me is that I hardly ever hear her speak English, so when I do it's like if your kid started tightrope walking without you ever having seen her practice. Or riding a bicycle for the first time without any help. I'm in awe how good she is and how clearly she speaks English until I remember that it is actually her first language. And I forget that although she really, really tries, her Danish is still muddled and she is missing a few key sounds that means mainly family and people who know her, can understand what she says. There are no hard r's and no sk's or kl's. In fact her pronunciation makes "sitting" and "saying" (in Danish) sound the same so we have a few funny conversations that are only funny until Zoe get so frustrated that she starts crying and screaming: Mommy you don't understand me! And I feel so bad that I go down on my knees and comfort her by promising to listen better and to understand better. But I still didn't know if she wanted to sit down or say something.

She mixes in a lot of English when she speaks Danish but to adults it quickly becomes part of her charm. She finally started being articulate about the languages herself and says with a laugh when we are out in Copenhagen: Mommy, they speak like us! On the way to a friend's house for a Christmas party, she asked what language they spoke to make sure she would be okay. They speak Danish, I reassured her and she was happy. She knows what she understands and what she doesn't understand. Yet, I really hope she will be able to play with more Danish kids to improve her bilingualism: So far her dolls all speak English and her stories that she read to them are in English. Tomorrow she is seeing her cousin who is only one year older than her. Let's hope she can teach the dolls some Danish.

Learning to speak two languages

Zoe is so far just bilingual. I speak Danish to her and her dad speaks English to her; she seems to understand both equally well. She attends an English speaking daycare so she is only exposed to Swedish when she interacts with our occasional babysitter and the few Swedish friends we have here. Obviously we will have to make sure she learns Swedish at one point but so far this has worked out well. Since Mark speaks neither Danish, nor Swedish, English is also our home language so I reckon Zoe hears approximately 80 percent English and 20 percent Danish in her everyday life. She now has a speaking vocabulary of around 10-20 words depending on how you count.

One of the things I am most proud of is that her 6th word was "bog", Danish for book. She even says it more clear than any of her other words. Her previous ones were simply mama, dada, baba, aye and no. Not that these are easy to decipher, mama means both mom, mommy's milk and food. Baba means baby but also anything childlike such as dolls, strollers she sees on the street (okay, which probably have a baba in them) and herself. But more specifically, her first words were non-language specific (except for no, which is only English). Even the word for more, "mere" in Danish was some mix, sounding more like "mar". But as she is getting better and picking up more words, very likely in daycare, it is clear that her understanding of language is that we ourselves decide what to call something and that there is no problem in that. She knows that I call it "øre", "næse", "mund", but when I ask her to say it, she says ear, nose, mouth (well more like eaaa, nos and mau). She observes that we use words specific to us, and which she understands, so she simply selects the words she wants to use. It is the meaning that is important, not the actual word.

Like any toddler she says hilarious things, particularly if you ask her mother. My favorite is her utterly surprising exclamation "oh no!" whenever something goes slightly wrong. And things go wrong all the time in her world. She drops a piece of cucumber on the floor (oh no!), she finds a damaged tile on the staircase up to our apartment (oh no!) or she can't find her doll before bedtime ("Zoe, where is your doll?" Oh no!). In fact I have the suspicion that it also means "I don't know" in specific situations. Of all the peculiarities she says, this is the one I hope she keeps the longest because it has such cheer childish innocence to it.

Okay, and then finally, I'm not proud that her 7th word was "mør", smør, which is butter in Danish. She loves her bread with butter in the morning and when I look away she runs her finger through the butter and eats it straight up. If I ask her why there are holes in the butter she looks puzzled at me with her big blue eyes and throws out her arms: Oh no!