Ice-cream

Tobias' first word, other than papa and mama, was probably "IJs"... That is Dutch for "Ice-cream"... Tobias is talking more and more now and he has been for the past couple of weeks. It is hard to say if his first word actually was "IJs", but it was the first time he spoke with intention. It was at my mom's birthday and we were having desert, ice-cream. He wanted some and he said "IJs" pointing at our ice cream. He had heard that word before and he actually had ice-cream before, but he had never said it before. Needless to say we were pretty surprised and needless to say that he had some ice-cream :-).

His vocabulary is increasing daily. He now says many words, like blue, green, yellow, bear, ball, bye, hi, wall, trash, red, and quite some more actually. I think it is hard to keep a list of his vocabulary because it is growing so rapidly! That is great to see and it is amazing how many words have been stored in his head and how well he can apply them. For example the colors that he uses, he applies them to other objects than the initial ones he identified first as being blue or yellow or green. They now apply to trees, balloons, cars, etc. He also knows a lot of letters. He has a letter toy that seems to work really well. Whenever he sees letters, like on a t-shirt or a store window or something, he will point to one and make its sound. He knows d, e, f, h, i, k, l, m, o, p, s, t, w, z. He knows some others as well, but he can't say them yet.

The most amazing thing with his language to me is the fact that not only does he know all these words, he knows some of them in both our languages!..... AND he will use the Dutch word when talking to me and the English one when talking to Lisa! AMAZING! To me it is anyway... The other night I was reading one book to him in Dutch and one in English. Both books feature a blue butterfly. While reading the Dutch book the butterfly was "blauw" (or "bauw" as he says it), while reading the English book the butterfly was "blue" (or "bue" as he says it). So he distinguishes between mommy and daddy as well as between daddy reading Dutch and daddy reading English! Once again: AMAZING!!!

Mama....

I believe this is my first post without a picture. I know that sometimes a picture says more than a thousand words, but this time words will have to do because
- first of all I did not have my camera at the time of the event I am about to describe
- second, I would have needed video in order to show what happened, and
- third, I had to laugh so hard that I would not have been able to capture the event anyway....

Ok, what happened? Well, let me begin by telling you that twe weeks ago Lisa bought Tobias a barn with barn animals. There are three kinds of animals: horses, sheep and cows. Each animal comes in a mother and a baby size. So, Tobias goes "mama, mama, beebee, beebee" when he is playing with them. Of course we ask questions like "Where is the baby horse?" and "Where is the mama cow?".

Another thing I should tell is that Tobias is very much into trashcans of all kinds. Whenever he sees one he point at it and says something like "da da". We are supposed to respond by saying "Trashcan!" and he will go "Ja.". He has proven to be a very good trashcan spotter. As we were biking this past weekend he would go "da da" pretty much every 5 minutes. A lot of times we didn't even see a trashcan, but at closer inspection there always was one, or just a tiny part of one visible somewhere...

Ok, here's the story... As you know we bought a new house. Currently we are looking for a new kitchen, bathroom, floor and such. So, the other day we were looking at bathroom stuff in a lowe's like place. As we were walking the various aisles we came across a tiny trashcan. The kind that has a footpedal operated lid and shines and everything. Well, needless to say it caught Tobias' attention. He walked towards it and started to thump on it an raising the lid, all the while going "da da". So, I responded "Trashcan!". Tobias went "Ja." and kept playing with it. At one point we wanted to go on so, I asked Tobias "Where is mama?" expecting him to go to mama so that we would be able to continue our tour through the store. Well, guess what happened.... he went to the bigger version of the trashcan, the "mama trashcan", instead!

I hope this story is as funny in writing as it was in the person, because I just couldn't stop laughing.... but then I guess a picture does say more than a thousand words sometimes. Well, I just know that as I re-read this in the future I will remember... and laugh...