This might as well be Part 20 by now… Alana is learning so fast, and I haven’t been updating! So I’m not going to get super specific about exact words, since there are too many now. Alana now knows:

• All her colors except gray and brown in English, and most of those in Mandarin
• All numbers 0-10 (English and Mandarin)
• All letters of the alphabet (“W” pronounced “da-yo-bu”)
• A whole bunch of animals (including some strange ones like “seagull” in English, and “termite” in Mandarin, for some reason)
• A good amount of fruit and basic foods (but not so many vegetables; she calls broccoli “trees”)
• The words “umbrella” and “rock” and “tree” and “sun” and “moon” (those last two are slowly becoming “the sun” and “the moon”)
• “car,” “big car,” “truck,” “bus,” “big bus,” “bike,” and “TRAIN!”

I write “TRAIN!” like that because she LOVES trains, and she freaks out whenever she sees one. Since we live right down the street from Zhongshan Park subway station, and the light rail also connects (and is above ground and visible from the street), she sees train every time we go outside our apartment complex, basically. And then it’s lots of exclamations of “TRAIN!” and “Train there!” and “train go bye-bye” or “train gone.” She’s also made sentences like “I see a train” and “I see a train there.” Her plurals and possessives are getting better (and more consistent) all the time. I was thinking she wasn’t getting into the whole “terrible twos” obsession with “MINE!” at all, but then just today she started doing it a bit. As for baby talk:

• “Computer” has gone from “peela” to “ca-poota”
• “Coffee” has gone from “effee” to the correct pronunciation
• “W” is “da-yo-bu”

SS amuses herself by asking Alana her opinion on questions like, “is Daddy’s butt stinky or fragrant?” (which Alana will answer, but kind of randomly) and then repeating the same question for other people. Alana enjoys this too. Alana is not running, jumping, and handling stairs much more confidently. She’ll go down playground slides the normal way, feet-first and face down, and also head-first.

Alana also has a thing for sticks. I encouraged this, I guess. But it’s just more fuel for the “kids don’t need toys” argument! She gets a real kick out of waving around different size sticks and poking different things with them. (Note: it’s normally not good when I take Alana and Newton out at the same time, and Alana finds a stick to play with.)

Alana is also learning to sing and dance. She regularly tries to sing the “ABC” song, and can do chunks at a time. I’m putting a video of her “dancing” in Jing’an Park at night on Flickr.