Words!

Léo has been understanding English and French quite well and he's talking more and more. Here's a little update of his vocabulary at almost 22 months (TWENTY TWO?!? Wow...)

- He says mama (sometimes "momon" for maman) and dada or daddy. He says "babi" for papi. He says "pa" for grandpa. He also knows the name of two friends at school "zzza" is Jack and "Mani" is Amani.
- He usually only pronounces two phonemes and not the end of the words: Ba(ll), bu(s), bi(rd) -actually he says "boo" for bird and "boo" is also for balloon-, boa(t), bi(ke), baba (byebye). So many baby words start with a B. At first he couldn't pronounce "p" and only said "b" (bea for pea = please. ba for pa = grandpa) but now he knows Ps!
- "Hai" for hi. He says hi to a lot of people. What a cutie!
- He says "non." Not "no" but "non." That's his only French word! For yes he has a high pitched "mmm."
- Of course he says "baba" for bottle and for anything that contains liquid.
- He says "dagay" and "agaaaaay" for again. He says that word about 408 times a day.
- "Doh" for go. When he watches sports on TV he says to the players "doh, doh, dho!"
- He uses a lot of sounds. Looots of sounds. All things that go have a sound as do all animals. Food is just "mmmm." His pillow and blanket have the same sound, kind of a silent snore "zzzzz."
- He shakes his body left-right-left to mean music.
- He says "nana" for banana and "appo" for apple, oranges, pears, and any fruit that's round.
- He has his own counting system: "bee boh da" are 1, 2, 3. I don't know how he came up with that but he's super consistent. And because we count stairs when he takes them, stairs are "bee-boh-da."
- Elmo is "Lala" because that's what he sings. Cookie Monster is "rwarwa", as are cookies. He knows the name of "Abby."
- He says "pea" and "tatoo" for please and thank you. He's quite polite, I must say.
- He knows the letter "o" because we keep on showing him the letters of his name and say "L-E-O-O-O-O." So he points to the "o" and says "o-o-o-o." His name is "élo" or "eelo." He says his name 1,010 times a day!!
- Other random words: "guitah" for guitar, "soo" for shoes, "boo" for blue and blueberry (and grapes because they look like blueberries!).
- He only puts two words together now. "Eelo doh," "baba pea" and so on.
- He points at the rest to show us what he means and it works really well!

That's it for now, I think. It's really neat to hear him try new words. He's not in any hurry to speak more because we all understand each other rather well.