It feels like Alana has been developing rapidly, so I think it’s high time for an update.

Language Skills: Names The first and most obvious development has been that Alana has finally learned the names of all the people she sees often. She learned “Mommy” and “Daddy” a long time ago, but didn’t get beyond that until these past two weeks. The names she knows are:

1. Mommy
2. Daddy
3. A-bu (Song Shen’s mom; this is a babified version of the Shanghainese word)
4. A-gu (Song Shen’s dad; this is a babified version of the Shanghainese word)
5. Yaya (Aida; this comes from the Tagalog word for “nanny”)
6. Eh-ya (mispronunciation of “Ella”; Alana now recognizes Ella in photos)

That’s about it for now. Interestingly, although she responds to her own name, she doesn’t seem to “know” it, and she never says it. She knows herself as “baby”, a word she also uses for other babies.

So now if you show her our family pictures, she can correctly identify everyone in the picture whose name she knows how to say.

Language Skills: Other Vocab Alana has been steady adding words to her vocabulary:

1. Fish/fishy (her current favorite; also gets overgeneralized to whales and sharks)
2. Apple
3. Bear
4. Ball
5. Dis (“this”)
6. Dat (“that”)
7. Wa (“water”)

SS claims she’s saying certain things in Shanghainese, but I can’t remember what those are.

Swimming We took Alana to a friend’s wading pool two weekends ago, and she LOVED that. After wading/“swimming” for two hours, she threw a little fit when we took her out of the pool because it was time to go home. The kid she swam with (SS’s co-worker’s son) was a bit of a brat, though. He kept pushing Alana down in the pool, which is super dangerous, considering how easy it would be for Alana to drown in that pool if she weren’t being constantly supervised. I gave him a few stern words, but really had to restrain myself from going off on that kid. Now I need to think about how I’m going to respond the next time stuff like this happens.

Temper Alana’s been getting more “terrible” lately. SS chalks it up to frustration with her growing skills (linguistic and otherwise) still falling short of her expectations. But she also started feeling very entitled to iPad usage, throwing tantrums when she didn’t get to use it, so that made us cut back to only letting her use it 3-4 times per week (about 15 minutes each time). That way it’s always a nice surprise rather than a “right.”

That’s it for now.