Nerdy Mom's Observation Report (1)

Your dad and I are amazed at, and frightened by, how quickly you learn, how persistent you are at practicing a newly acquired skill, and how incredibly stubborn you can be at doing things your way and on your own.

I watched with my jaw hanging down to my chest as you "played" in the driver's seat in the garage. Other than the obvious "driving" motions (turning the steering wheel and honking the horn), you also put the imaginary keys into the ignition, "fixed" the rearview mirror, turned the signal on and off, and tried to shift gears! You must be incredibly observant because, even though you're still too little to reach them, you know your feet should touch the pedals. Every so often, you'd sit down (which is rare these days, as you usually stand on chairs), extend your right leg and pointed your toes down to reach the gas pedal. You were so busy and happy! As I looked on in the passenger's seat, I asked, "Are you driving Mommy somewhere? Where are we going?" You raised your eyebrows and pointed your index finger straight ahead. "Vroom! Vroom!" you made "the car sound", and off we went!

When we're out, you not only want to touch the cars and motorcycles on the street, you're drawn to anything with wheels, like strollers and shopping carts. At home, you have 20 toy cars in various sizes and shapes. You usually turn the wheels on the smaller cars with one hand and watch them spin. With the bigger cars, you push them off on the floor and crack up when they turn on their side. Recently, I've noticed, you've started to turn your push-n-ride onto its side or upside-down so you can closely examine how the wheels work. It won't be long until you're old enough to work on a car with Daddy in the garage (That's one of Daddy's dreams).

Aside from being observant, you're also meticulous and persistent in the things you do. I mean, you're still learning to use a fork, and I see how you challenge yourself to pick up pieces of food of different sizes, shapes, and texture at almost every meal. Just this morning you finally "forked up" a single Cheerio after crushing countless ones to pieces!

You're persistent and determined in learning to talk as well. First thing you do when you get up in the morning is to practice all the sounds you know and try out different combinations of them all. I can hear the hesitation when you mix what you know as an English sound to a Chinese sound. Intuitively, you know something's off. What cracks me up is that your mimicking of the Chinese sounds has a certain sing-song quality to it, which is not at all evident in your mock intonation of English sound sequence.

You repeat what we say after hearing it once. It's usually the last word in a sentence (like you'd repeat "bite" in "take a bite") or a single word in isolation, such as "shit" (yup, the time for the adults to censor what comes out of their mouths has arrived). What tickles me the most (having studied linguistics and speech science) is the fact that, although your production of the so-called "recognizable words" are still limited to monosyllabic and bisyllabic sounds, it is evident that you're fascinated and intrigued by the sounds and sound combinations that are more articulatorily-challenging within the one- and two- syllable range. For instance, while some kids may pronounce the hard "r" sound (hard in terms of intensity, not difficulty) more like the British, you actually practice the hard "r" sound in words like "car" and "chair" by exaggerating (hence prolonging) the vowel sound. What this does is that it gives your tongue enough time to utilize the muscles it needs for the retraction of the root and the curling of the tip, and to do so in the correct sequence! This may sound weird, but I love listening to your repetitive "car"s (Ha! Pun alert). I love hearing how you work to get the "r" more accurately articulated each time you practice.

In terms of two-syllable words, you use the ones with open syllables with ease (i.e., pu-pi "puppy" and da-di "daddy"), but you work hard at perfecting bisyllabic words that contain two closed syllables! For example, what was said as "pi-jur" around Christmas time has been perfected to "pik-chur" (picture) and "tra-tor" to "trac-tor".

It's exciting stuff! At 16 months, you're a natural linguist with the ability to analyze, dissect, and reconstruct speech patterns. I can't wait to see what sounds and sound combos you'll be working on next.

That's it for this observation report.