Monday, April 18, 2011

Valerie update (Updated)

Valerie and Terry enjoying a picnic on the balcony

Speaking of language learning, Valerie has all of a sudden started using a lot of words in Shqip! She likes to play a language-learning computer game Terry got, that uses pictures to teach vocabulary and some basic phrases. I discovered months ago that she could recognize most of the words but it took until now for her to start producing them. So far she's been using:
  • domate = tomato
  • vezë = eggs
  • oriz = rice
  • patate = potato
  • tas = bowl
  • e verdhe = yellow
  • thikë = knife
  • pirun = fork
  • anijë = ship/boat
  • and all the numbers to 12 (an interesting tidbit - she doesn't say "seven" in English, whenever she's counting she goes "six, m-mm, eight..." etc. but she can say "shtatë" in Albanian just fine)
  • (Updated to add): Bukë = bread
  • ujë = water
  • qumësht = milk
  • pis = yucky
She's turning into a little chatterbox, too! At bedtime she'll spend some 20 minutes or so just talking about the day, and it's fun to hear from her perspective what stood out as important or made an impression. Like one day Gabriel lost his balance while cruising around the coffee table, and fell on his bottom and cried. He pulled a toy Noah's Ark down with him and it made a loud noise. For days afterwards she'd bring it up at random moments - "Blablirl fall down Noah's Ark."

She's a bundle of energy. She has also started skipping her afternoon nap from time to time - for a couple of weeks there, she only napped every other day. Right now she's on a daily-nap streak but I'm not sure how long it will last. The only upside is that she does fall asleep a little earlier on no-nap days.

I can't believe she's almost THREE!!!

2 comments:

tara said...

that is so cool about V's words! nice pics too.

Rachel said...

That is amazing to me that she is learning a 3rd language. I can't imagine what it must be like to learn so easily.