Language aquistion

Since my first language is Spanish and it is zee language that I still speak with mi mama and some other friends/family (don't know why we just got used to speaking English with my dad) I've always thought it important to teach my kids Spanish.  I've always known I wanted to do it, but it wasn't until I had Hyrum that I really started to question how exactly I would go about doing it. A common way to go about learning two languages is by only speaking the minority language, and the other parent would only speak English.  That was my initial idea of how I would go about doing it but it just didn't sit right with me for several reasons.  First of all, what would we speak we can were all conversing as a family?  I didn't want to feel like I was excluding my husband out of the conversation with this private Spanish language with the kids.  Also, If I just spoke Spanish, their English learning would be delayed because they would mainly hear Spanish from me....which kids can get over (eg. me and my sibs)...but I liked the idea of being able to go out in the dominantly English speaking world and have my little ones understand what was going on, interact with others, and I wanted to be able to speak to them in English so others wouldn't feel uncomfortable (people feel like you are talking about them anytime they don't understand a language...and yes, yes that is what we are doing. jk) I also wanted to be a part of teaching them numbers, colors, fruits and everything there is to learn in both languages. I was torn about what to do. I almost just wanted to forget the whole bilingual thang but I knew that it would be more painful later when they asked why I never taught them Spanish.
There was one option, not as common but seemingly just as effective: altering the two languages every other day. The more I thought about it the more it seemed be ideal for our family.  Here are some reasons why I thought it would be effective:

• We could all learn Spanish together.  Jess knows basic Spanish and we could work together to improve his Spanish, my Spanish can always improve, a lot actually... and of course our kids could learn it.
• If you go through a mother's day, you realize that you say much of the same things to your child everyday.  I figure that when you go through the same motions in two different languages day after day, it becomes easy for a child to pick up that these two different words equals this very same thing.
• I could read, sing, watch movies, teach, talk as much as I wanted to my child in language and know that the next day we could do all those things in a different language and feel like my little one was getting (about) equal exposure to both languages. 

Since language really is about interacting with people, we try to be context sensitive. It might be Spanish day but if everyone is speaking English we try to address Hyrum in English when others are part of the conversation. When we are around my mom, it is always 'Spanish' day.  

Confusing to talk to child in two different languages like that? A little bit.  It took us a while to get used to it but after doing it a while (He was like 9 months when we start) it is becoming routine. Jess and I mainly speak English to each other in even on Spanish days because we realized that we just wanted to talk and the stress of having to speak a language we have a hard time with is not helpful after a long day...but we strive to speak as much Spanish as we can.  

Cons?  So I was listening to this radio show with this linguist expert a couple months after I started this and he claimed that language acquisition must be natural (which I agree) and mentioned that, for instance, speaking a language to a child every other day is not natural and said that it was a 'recipe for disaster'.

Hmm, he didn't explain it much further, but it really got to me.  What?  Am I doing something wrong here?  Well, I fumbled over it for a bit but came to the conclusion that I felt good about what I was doing and it was working out with my family.  If I felt like I needed to make adjustments along the way, so be it, but I couldn't drop everything because of a so called specialist. 

Anyway, I believe Hyrum is doing well after about nine months of doing this.  He seems to understand things in both languages. For instance I can say something like "Where are your shoes" or "Donde estan tus zapatos" and he will run and get his shoes.  "Do you want to eat?" or "Quieres comer" and he will sign 'eat'. 

To make things more complicated, we've added sign language in the mix. My purpose was not to make things more complicated or even just to follow the crowd (pretty popular that baby signing, eh?), but signing seemed like the perfect universal language when trying to learn two. Learning two languages usually means speech is delayed in kids, so I thought signing would give him a chance to express himself when he otherwise maybe couldn't.  I almost gave up on signing because it seemed like he didn't care about doing it, but I'm glad I somewhat stuck to it because over the last couple months it seems like he has picked up so much, it is exciting to see your little one pick up on things. I read that kids have intellectual growth spurts as well physical growth spurts, so I would suspect that is what happened.

For the record here are some of signs he's mastered so far--by mastered I mean he uses them regularly, not necessarily signs them with great dexterity.

more, please, thank you, all done, eat, apple, bath, toothbrush, cheese,  dog, baby, fis, cereal,  airplane, elephant, thirsty, banana, orange.

And now he is starting to vocalize some things: Mama Daddy and CHEESE (these were his three words for a good while. I love that cheese was one of them, because if you are only if know of 3 words, cheese better be one!) He says Jesus (like to point at pictures) and Amen (quite into praying now...constantly foldin' his arms.) And in Spanish he says: Uva (grape), Aqua (water, sounds lots like grape), and...well...my mom taught him...caca...which he says quite liberally.

Conclusively, I guess only time will tell how messed up our kids will be in the end.  

If you have any advice for me, are teaching or thinking about teaching more than one language to your kiddos feel free to mention it.  Thanks.