- He's got a couple more words down: "bu2 yao4" (=don't want to, i.e. no), zai4 jian4 (= bye) and bye. For a while, he really likes to pull others' noses for fun. I tell him "bu2 yao4", and he'd loosen the grip and take his hand back. He responds to both "zai4 jian4" and bye with hand waving. It's nice to see the bi-lingual training taking effect.
- He shows preferences for some books more than others. For the ones he doesn't care for, he tends to wander away while you read to him and eventually take the book from you and throw it off the bed to stop you from reading. For the ones he likes, not only does he seem to focused, he makes the surprising "oh" sound whenever getting to a page that he finds fascinating. He continues making that sound for his favorite pages as if seeing them for the first time every time. Right now his favorite books are the "Baby's First Numbers" and "I Spy". He liked the "Baby's First Words" book for many months but eventually lost interest in it recently. Ffor a few weeks I've been asking him "where is the dog" in Chinese when we get to page 10 in the Number book (has 10 dogs for illustration), and then hold up his stuffed animal dog. He now looks around the bed for his dog and bring it to me when I ask that question.
- It seems some words learning are associated with the environment (or at least initially). For example, I often say "wo wo shou" (means shake hands) in the car when we are at stop lights. Initially he starts to clap as he confuses it with the clapping word in Chinese. After while he learns the distinction and always extends one hand out for me to shake. But when I say "wo wo shou" in different settings, he doesn't always extend the hand out (still confuses with clapping sometimes).
- He has more stranger anxiety now. He cries loud and hard when he doesn't see mom or dad around on his 13mo going back to WI trip for Thanksgiving than on his 8 mo WI trip. It takes him a few days to warm up to the grandparents, but once he does, he couldn't stop his bumping heads greeting with them.
- He hasn't figured out the classical
sorting block toy yet. He likes to open the top and dunk all the blocks in that way. So he's got a homemade bigger sorting toy now. It's a Costco size Oatmeal box with a cicle and a square cut out on one side. The circular is the easy one as it doesn't require any rotation to fit the object in. He practices with round and rectangular juice bottles. After lots of practice he is able to push the rectangular bottle into the square hole consistently one night. But he regresses the next few days and when he gets frustrated, he just throw the bottle on the floor.
Homemade Sorter (Spending the most practice on the middle one)- He practices pushing a cart borrowed from Irene while in WI. After a bit of training he is able to make some turns by himself by starting to turn before it hits furniture. Then he regresses. He likes pushing his truck now since coming back. It is a little harder to steer as the handle is narrower, so he roams along from the living room to the hallway to the front door straight (mostly).
