Look Who's Talking

Johan started talking when Vlinder and co. came to visit this summer. (We think she inspired him!) His first word was "oho," which is his way of saying "vogel," or bird.

Next were "bus" and "auto" -- some more of his favourite things! A lot of his words are Dutch -- I think due to the immersion experience of the three-week visit with Oma, Opa, Oom Arvid, Tante Merle and Vlinder. His vocab includes "Quack" (when you ask him what an "eend" (duck) is, or if he points to one in his book, as well as "Kaka" -- which is an attempt to say Kikker, or frog. He also says "cacker" for cracker and "mo" for more. Another favourite word: "jus, jus, jus, jus jus"!!!

Johan is great at pointing to animals and objects in his Richard Scarry "Wordenboek". He doesn't call many of the animals by their names -- he knows them by their noises. Hence, "woof" for the hondtje, "boo" (what Dutch cows say), "raaah" for the tijger or leo, and snorting noises for the varken, or pig. He will also say "vis" or "fish" -- I'm not sure which one he is actually saying!

It's really exciting to watch his vocabulary grow -- just last night as he raced up and down the kitchen, and Sven started calling out "Go, go!" to him, Johan started to repeat that word every time he took off!

A few weeks ago, I asked him, "How much do I love you?" and to my great amazement, he stretched his arms in the air as high as they could go, just like Little Nutbrown Hare in the "Guess How Much I Love You" book. I'd only been reading it to him for a week or two and had no idea that he really understood it -- it's really neat to realize how much he does understand.

We look forward to hearing more and more from him -- and it will be interesting to see which languages he uses, and he is now in a French daycare, and so there's three languages going in to his little blond head!

Andrea