LiLi's Verbal Skills

It seems that LiLi has finally had a third breakthrough in her verbal skills.  The first breakthrough occurred at a mere 10 months old when she started saying “What’s that?”  For the 9 months since, she has been saying “What’s that” about 200 times a day (seriously).  The second breakthrough was a bit more subtle and we didn’t document when exactly it happened, but at about 16 months (this past July) she began pointing at animals in her book when we said the name. 

This past weekend we had a very obvious breakthrough where she has begun moderate talking.  And since we’re teaching her two languages, this is a bit more complicated to explain.  Whenever Vicki references ‘daddy’ LiLi now ALWAYS corrects her by saying “baba” (Chinese for daddy).  Whenever she needs something, she calls out for mama (same meaning in Chinese and English).  When we ask her where Baobao (baby) is, she either points at Vicki’s belly or goes to point at the two characters on our baby carrier.  She also now will say “bikebarn” when we point at anything that says bikebarn.  Today, looking at a picture of a fish she said “yu” (fish).  Finally, she has started to say “I did it” at various appropriate time. And, of course, she still says "what's that?" at least 200 times a day.

We don’t fully grasp the extent of her understanding of Chinese, but we know she knows most of her animals in both English and Chinese.  When asked if she understands Chinese, LiLi doesn’t like to talk on command; however,  if we ask her “gǒu shuō shénme?” (what does a dog say?), she’ll almost always go “woof woof”.  We look forward to more breakthroughs in the future!