Letters To Our Children // July

We are back from America. It was a full trip!

This month I am going to talk about my children's language skills.

Both of them had a "language explosion" this last month. I don't even know if that phrase is English or Dutch or one I made up.

Before we left Liora was chattering some and would often imitate sounds. During our time away, she started saying so many words!!! Every day we were laughing at what she'd say. I read an article on babycenter that said she should speak between 10 and 50 words. I decided to write down every word I heard her say. By the middle of the day we had 30 already.

For me it is strange, because Mateo was slower at talking.  We also noticed Liora started making 2 word sentences. Often along the lines of "Mama, look!"  She also is quite the little tattle tale *rolls eyes*.  Any time Mateo does something to her, she comes and says, "Mama, Teo mkqjkjqzerkjmqskerj."  The funniest so far, that I need to write in her book, but I'll write it here was a time we were driving. "Mama! Mama! Teo num-num." Normally I try to ignore her when I'm driving, but then I tried to think what Mateo would be eating, I hadn't given him any food. I turn and look and he was eating his boogies.

In general Mateo has been surprising me with how much he's been saying. It's probably  normal, but as I said, he has been a bit slower. Not that he couldn't perfectly communicate what he wanted, but he did it with few words. I am impressed with his word order in Dutch. It comes natural. Duh. But for me what is still hard to remember is normal to him.

People said that he'd start speaking English when we were in America. I was very doubtful. I told everyone he could understand. I left him with my parents and sister. Sometimes he'd be frustrated if they said they didn't understand him, so they just pretended they did.

After about a week if you told him something to say in English, he'd repeat it.  On July 3rd when mom got back with him she said he had been speaking tons to her!!! *happy dance* That last week he was speaking every day new words and phrases. Super cute, becuase he has a bit of an accent and his great Dutch word order he's using in English. It made me so happy that finally something clicked!  I asked him if he'd keep speaking it when we got back. He said he would and he has been the past 2 days. (As I'm typing, he said "Do this. Mommy. Do it NOW! I schiet (shoot) Daddy")

 

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