The Snowball of Learning is Rolling...

...and it's fun to watch it pick up speed everyday as Bella's brain makes connections and learns new things.

Everyday we hear new English words coming out of her mouth.  Sometimes she simply repeats words for the fun of hearing the sounds come out of her own mouth, but usually she uses these words with a degree of comprehension.  She notices phrases that are familiar when hearing them on TV or radio.  She repeats new phrases that she hears others saying--in the neighborhood, shopping, at church, etc. 

Backing up, she and I still speak Chinese all day long.  I encourage her to speak English to others when we're out or with friends, and I sometimes will repeat phrases in English after I've said them in Chinese.  But that's exhausting and for now, I want to focus on keeping her Chinese as much as we can.  She and Lilly mostly speak Chinese to one another when they are playing--it has been equally fun to watch the Chinese synapses in Lilly's brain begin to fire again.  Sometimes Lilly's word order is reflective of English grammar but she inserts the Chinese words she is hearing me use with Bella.  Bella seems to understand Lilly's Chinese with no problem.

Chinglish is beginning to kick in for Bella.  For example, the Chinese word for "this one" is "zhe ge" (pronounced with a "j" sound).  Bella has turned the English "this one" into a Chinglish "zhish one." 

Some of her growing list of new Enlish vocabulary words of late (the ones that I can remember right now...I really need to write things down as she says them so I can remember!):

• All done!
• Please
• Good Girl!
• Sank You! (Thank you)
• Hold on!
• Let's go (said with an extra syllable so it sounds like "Let's-A go!"
• Night NIght
• Bye Bye
• See ya later.
• Hi!
• cold
• hot
• itchy (always said in a very whiney tone of voice for some reason)
• brush teeth
• neeeeeed help!
• here you go.
• Love you!
• funny!

Increasingly, Bella asks me to translate every single conversation that takes place within earshot.  Now that she is starting to learn some English, I think she is hungry and desprate to piece together what she's hearing and not be left out of conversation at any time.  I try my best to accommodate her, but it is absolutely exhausting and sometimes the conversations have nothing at all to do with her; in those instances I just tell her they weren't talking to her and she moves on. 

One of Bella's favorite things to do is to simply write.  She loves paper and pencils and pens and crayons and markers.  She and Lilly spend hours simply on the floor with papers between them, with Bella attempting to copy letters.  Bella cannot walk past a sign without searching the words for letters that she recognizes--mostly words that start family members' names such as "M--Mama," "L--Lilly," "A--Anna,", "B-Bella and Baba"  Her writing has really progressed from just scribbles to more purposeful lines that are actually starting to resemble letters.  She says she can't wait to go to school with Lilly so she can learn to write too.