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!!!