Wow, so much for documenting Alana’s linguistic developments as they happen! Alana is learning faster than ever now, and I’ve fallen way behind in chronicling it. Oh well! We’re still enjoying it.

So this is just going to be a random hodge-podge of facts about Alana over the past couple of months. It’s become a pretty regular thing to go down to Pacific Coffee on Saturday mornings. I often sleep in a bit, and SS takes Alana there first around 9:30am. Almost every week, another young couple is there with their son Tengteng (4yo), and he and Alana get along well together. Here’s a shot of them: Sometime after 2, Alana started using “yes” and “OK” a lot. She still sometimes repeats verbs (the way to answer in the affirmative in Chinese) instead of using “yes,” but it’s getting better. So if I ask her, “do you like it?” she’ll sometimes answer, “I like it” or “like it,” and sometimes answer “yes.”

She really caught onto “it’s too loud” recently, and likes to point out when things are too loud, and ask someone to “turn it down.”

Here’s a picture from when Brad and Damen visited a few weeks ago: Alana is a little confused with how to classify people. She knew “shushu” and “ayi” as polite forms of address for men and women, but didn’t know the words “man” and “woman” in English. I wasn’t going to have her calling everyone “uncle” and “auntie,” so I taught her “man” when she referred to a man as a “little boy.” So (in theory, at least) she now knows “baby,” “little boy/girl,” big boy/girl,” and “man/woman.”

Alana is no longer obsessed with trains, and is instead obsessed with fire safety equipment. We think this started when SS’s mom started taking her to the “fire safety museum” attached to the fire station next to our apartment complex. Anyway, Alana now knows (in English and in Chinese): fire, fire truck, fire fighter, fire station, fire extinguisher, fire hose, fire hydrant, fire alarm. She calls the “fire extinguisher boxes” she sees “fire boxes.” Every time we take her to the store, she has to find and point out every fire alarm and fire extinguisher she can. It’s pretty cute, and it also makes me realize that Shanghai is actually not in terrible shape when it come to fire safety! Alana can pretty much recite the whole alphabet, but struggles a little with the “L-M-N-O-P” part, and also always forgets the final line, “next time won’t you sing with me.” But she can sing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” in its entirety (both English and Chinese), “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” (English), “两只老鼠” (“Frère Jacques” in Chinese), “I See the Moon,” and maybe a few others I can’t think of right now.

She likes doing the “lip vibration” thing (not exactly “raspberries,” but a more high pitched version), and for some reason has taken to always saying the word “blue” with this weird sound: “brpbrpbrpue.” If you call her on it, she’s say “blue” correctly, but she’s been pronouncing just the word “blue” that way for about 2 weeks now.

Just in the past week, Alana became very interested in learning the planets. She now knows Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn pretty well, and Uranus and Neptune at about 50%. The Chinese names she isn’t as strong on. SS’s mom has been noticing that Alana is a bit of a schemer around other kids. The other day she asked a kid for some of his crackers, but he wouldn’t give her any. So she asked SS’s mom for grapes, which she then tried to trade for the crackers. When the kid wouldn’t do it, she didn’t want the grapes anymore. She pulled a similar trick another day, “giving away” some food (which she didn’t want) to another kid, and then expecting the kid to let her play with his toy. Budding business skills?

About a month or two ago, we lowered the floor of Alana’s crib all the way to the floor so she couldn’t crawl out of it so easily. Now she can crawl out again. Last weekend, both Saturday and Sunday, she was in our room before we even knew she was awake. Not sure what we’re going to do about that. Last weekend I played catch with her quite a bit. She loved it. We stand a couple feet apart. I showed her how to hold her hands out to catch the ball (it’s a pink studded rubber ball the size of a softball), and then I toss it right into her hands, and she can catch it. I can also bounce it into her hands, and she can catch it. I have to send it pretty much right between her hands for her to catch it, but she loves it, and it clearly makes her so proud. SS was trying to play a video game while we were playing catch, and it was so cute watching her demand SS’s attention and affirmation every time she made a catch.