Language.

E is playing computer games in Swedish. I am sort of doubting that listening to words that she doesn't understand is helping her language at all. I suspect it's helping ME, to hear it in the background, but I know more words than she does. I mean, it's not hurting her, I don't think. I just wish that she was getting more practice out of it since I went to the trouble of finding them for her and getting her interested. She's pretty good with games, and figures out the point of them pretty quickly, so I guess she's having fun and I heard this rumor that some parents can let their chidlren play games EVEN IF they aren't educational. Hmm.... nah, surely not. ;)

Maybe I should be playing them instead of her.

Evie's lack of Swedish really stresses me out but I am just so not sure what to do about it. It's not like I can teach her much myself because my Swedish sucks. I have forgotten a lot of what I did know. M is perfectly okay with me not really knowing Swedish. He sort of thinks that putting effort into it for me is kind of silly... which, I think he's happy that I care, but if it were him, he would not dream of learning a language useful with nine million people in a country far removed from the one we're living in. As it is, though, I spend more time working on her Swedish than he does. M has a bit of a talent for languages, but he isn't good at switching them--speaking to Evie in Swedish and then me in English, and of course since he didn't keep that up to begin with, it's sorta hard to start now if he expects her to understand him at all. So... we failed, starting off, so how are we supposed to fix what we did now?

Seriously, that's not a rhetorical question. How do you force a language on a four-year-old? She's not *completely* without words that she knows, but for most practical purposes, she doesn't understand anything. Oh, but she did ultimately find a part of the game that was actually educational for her as far as learning words goes, and it happened to be the one that she liked the best.

We have a free three-day weekend and we have absolutely no plans. I don't understand how this happened. I'm thrilled! But confused. We could go to the zoo! Or hang around at home! Or go shopping! Or go on vacation! Or find a house project to work on! Or! Who knows. The beauty of having nothing going on. I suspect we will do a little of all of them. Except probably that vacation thing. I'm not really seeing that one happening, alas.