An update...with video!

I crack myself up. I promised all my lingering readers several updates last week.

Oops. Sorry about that:)

I have been busy...I've rearranged the garage, had a yardsale and reorganized my basement. Now I'm prepared to begin the dreaded task of transitioning the clotheS. Have mercy on me. There is nothing more dreaded. Well, a few other things, but this is near the top:)

So, I thought this WEEK's update (no more promises:) would be on the whole language thing.

It always made me smile that everyone was always very concerned about her not understanding english. I can say that on a scale of 1 to 10 this has been a stress level of about 2. Seriously...it's not been a big deal.

Kids are amazing. Our brains are like concrete at our age, so new languages just bounce off them...but kids are truely like sponges. YaoYao is like one of those infomercial sponges....absolutely amazing with how much she absorbs.


She picked up some english while we were in China. However, not too much. Once we were home in the States...holy moly immersion works! She started to understand it with intensity. Within 2 or 3 weeks home, I feel she was understanding almost 50% of my communication with her.

No, she didn't understand all of the little words, but the main points were very easy to get across.

We've now been home a little more than 6 weeks and she is just doing phenomenally with language. She has finally started to spontaneously speak english. Before, she was parroting. Her english is excellent when she repeats me, but now that it is spontaneous, she is not always as clear.

Here are some things she can say (some have been happening for a couple of weeks:

• She can sing her ABC's to the letter G by herself.


• She can count to 3, but tonight I heard her count to 6.


• Good job! (she says this for herself:)


• All done


• Stop it!! (this is most often said to her brother when he is picking on her (I'll let you guess which one)


• Is it good?? (she says this to other people each time we eat)


• She sings "We will, we will rock you" (one of Lil' Rocker's favorite tunes:)


• Why? (this one makes me want to bang my head. Lil' Rocker is in the "why" stage. I counted almost 20 why's on one subject the other day. Now she does it. I don't think she has any idea, but she imitates everything!)


• Nie Nie (Have you ever seen the mop type thing that Lil'Rocker sometimes holds in his pictures? This is his beloved blankie, "nie nie". Now YaoYao has a "blankie" that she now calls nie nie (her doing not mine). If she falls and cries, the 1st words out of her mouth are "nie nie". ...JUST like Lil Rocker.

These are just a few things. Of course she says a ton of words, but I will bore you with listing out her vocabulary.

I took a video of her a couple of weeks ago...it was taken 4 weeks after we were home. It's unedited (seriously...it would NEVER get posted otherwise), but if you hang on til the end you will see some of her comprehension skills. The beginning you can listen to yet more of her continous singing.:)

It's hard to believe that we have known who "she" was for one entire year! We 1st saw her picture and her videos over Memorial Day weekend in 2008. Sometimes, I still can't believe she is actually here.