Sunday, September 25, 2011

19th to 21th month

Aelig turned 21 months yesterday and we totally forgot about it! How dare we!! Remember when she was a baby we used to buy her a cake for her monthday.

Anyway, over the summer we did a lot of activities with her:

Helping her tonton (uncle) Benjy moved to his new house.


Changing the flooring to parquet. Aelig and her friends are inaugurating the new flooring.


Celebrating her great grandma's 90th birthday.


Discovering the beach with her grandparents and us.

Language developments
She is in a phase that she picks up a word quickly. She might not know the meaning completely but she could repeat after us easily. Her new vocabularies in French:
Poussette (strolley), bisous (kiss), gâteau (biscuit), par terre (on the floor), partout (every where), ballon (ball), tomber (fall down), chambre (room), bouche (mouth), main (hand), nez (nose), travail (work), bêtise (messed up), couche (diaper), petit ours (little bear), dodo (sleep), bravo, nounours (Terry Bear), il y a plus (there's no more), assis (sit down), c'est bon (it is good), ça y est (done).

In Mandarin:
Ping Gan (biscuit), Da Xiang (elephant but normally refers to Youtube videos or DVD), Lao Hu (tiger), Tiao (jump), Pai Pai Shou (clap hands), Wa Zi (socks), Yi Fou (cloth), Shui Yi (night dress), He Shui (drink water), Yu (fish), Xia Hu (raining), Si Si (wet). She also points correctly to her body parts when I call out the word: head, hair, eyes, ears, mouth, nose, hands, feet.

In terms of instructions, she understands when I say:
I'm going to change your diaper
Let's go; Watch; Give it to me
Let's go wash your hand / Wash your hair / Comb your hair
Let's go take a bath (she will go to the bathroom)
Let's go to sleep (she will protest or walk into her room, waiting to be put in her bed)
Kiss daddy goodnight (she will bang her forehead against daddy's face)


In this photo, Aelig is learning mandarin characters. How I wish, she usually just messing around. She picks up words faster / more in French than in Mandarin. When she says a word in French and I say it in Mandarin, she just keep quiet as if she is confused. To cope with the confusion, she would say the word in different languages from one moment to another. For example for the word "cat", at one moment she said "chat" (cat in French), then she said "mao" (cat in Mandarin), then "mimi" (the name of her sitter's cat), and now she says "miao" (cat sound in a song).

I finally managed to buy DVDs with Mandarin kid songs, now every evening she is asking for "Da Xiang" (Elephant) which refers to playing YouTubes or DVD on my laptop. With all these watchings, she starts singing the "Da Xiang" song.

Her sentimental developments:

Authority: She gives instructions to her toys these days. It is hilarious, she would ask her doudou / cat / dog / tiger to sit down quietly beside her. If they bend to one side, she would scold them.

Jealousy
: We went to visit a friend who got a 5 months old baby. When I held the baby, she protested by lying on the floor and crying out loud. Grandma did the something but she didn't bother about it.

Like praising: Each time she manages to follow an instruction correctly, or eat with her spoon, she would look at us and expect some praising from us. If we do not response, she would say "bravo" and clap her hands to herself.

Expressing her wants and dislikes: These days she would pull my hand when she wants me to do something with her. If she doesn't get what she wants, she would lay down on the floor and band her head. Then she feels painful and would look at me and says "tête-tête!" (head). Or she would throw her toys to the floor and cry to me that her toys are on the floor.

Get involved: We toss with family and friends when we eat together and now she wants to do the same. She would raise her cup and do tossing with everyone. Now I let her "help" around, when we got home with grocery I asked her to put potatoes and shallots in the container.


Yesterday we made crumble together and she enjoyed it. She loved it so much that at the end she scoped out the crumble and eating them before I even had change putting them into the baking dish. Result: the dessert has a hole at the edge as there was no enough dough to cover the pear filling.

Overall, we are happy with her developments. Most importantly, she is getting closer to her daddy. When he watches TV, she would climb to him and make herself comfortable sitting beside him. A real improvement!

1 comment:

  1. I'm especially fond of this one : "Kiss daddy goodnight (she will bang her forehead against daddy's face)"

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