We often find ourselves marveling that Lola isn't even a year and a half yet. Her language and comprehension and observation skills are phenomenal. She never ceases to amaze us with a new skill that she seemingly has acquired out of thin air. We have never used baby talk with her and now more than ever we don't feel the need to.
Lola learned to count from one to ten in both English and Mandarin a few weeks back, and now has taken to counting at warp speed and with a musical lilt. She surprised us out of the blue one day a couple of weeks ago by reciting, "A B C D" and now has gotten to "H" before she falters and switches to numbers. She has long been able to recognize red, blue, green, yellow, and orange and I think she has purple and pink down now also. If you offer her a selection of colors and asks her to pick, she can also deduce the right one by eliminating the colors she knows.
Lola can also sing the first two lines of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star in Chinese on her own. She can also fill in the blank if you continue singing the rest of the song. Whenever she sees a sheep now, she says "Baa baa black sheep!" very excitedly. She continues to love the happy birthday song and wants to wish (and sing) happy birthday to everybody. If she wants the heads, shoulders, knees and toes song, she will demand, "knees and toes!" Lola clearly loves music and songs - she learned a bunch of phrases from her Chinese songs as well, such as "shake hands," and "bend at the waist," and "how are you."
Lola loves books and is a great mimic of our expressions and words. Everyone says she has a real talent for language. When I sat down to flip through her Baby Einstein books with her this week, I realized to my shock that she knew practically everything on every page. Orange, duck, horse, pig, baby, swing, slide, ball, flower, car, tree, bird...and for every word she knows, she usually knows it in both English and Mandarin. Her vocabulary is pretty astonishing. She has started to put sentences together, including "I love you Mama" and "Go out to play"! When we were looking at a book together, she pointed out an escalator, then, noticing that it was blue, she said in Chinese, "lan se de dian ti" which translates to "blue escalator". It doesn't sound particularly difficult in English, but in Chinese, to use an adjective correctly, you have to know to put the adjective in front of the noun and use the modifier "de", which Lola did perfectly.
What makes Lola so special and funny though, is that she not only picks up words quickly, she really knows how to use the expressions correctly. It is a never-ending source of delight to us. For example, she always knows how to use "Ooops!" She has been saying it for a few months now in the context of a dropped item. More recently she picked up the word "aiya!" from Jovie. But she doesn't use it when she drops something or when she makes a mistake - she uses it to express her frustration. One of the best stories this month has got to be when Michael and Lola were reading "We're Going on a Bear Hunt." Lola is super, super excited about the page where they run up the stairs once they find the bear. She kept saying to Michael, "Up the stairs! Up the stairs!" But Michael had no idea what she was saying and kept trying to guess but was clearly not getting it. But Lola refused to give up, and kept pointing, and kept repeating herself. Finally, when Michael exclaimed in understanding, Lola put the book aside, threw out her hands in exasperation, and said in the loudest voice, "AIYA!" These adult mannerisms in such a tiny little munchkin... they really slay us.
Speaking of munchkins... on our trip to Macau, Michael referred to Lola as a munchkin, and she immediately picked up on the term and mimicked him, repeating munchkin a bunch of times. Today, I came home from work to learn that Lola said, "Lola, Lola, what do you see?" while reading her "Brown Bear Brown Bear" book. And guess what she answered to her own question? "I see a munchkin looking at me." I mean, I know I am coming across as a crazy doting mother right now, but that is clever!
Speaking of Macau... Lola is very observant. We had known this for a while because ever since she could talk she would point to different things and say who they belonged to - and she was always right. Mommy's purse, Tita's shoes, Daddy's glasses, etc. But her powers of observation really surprised us on this trip when, emerging from the elevator on our floor on our first day of our stay, Lola could pick out our hotel room door. How is that possible? We were about 15 rooms down from the elevator bank. The only thing I could see that might be helpful was that our door faced the hallway directly because it was where the hallway turned slightly. But even then - I think an adult would be hard pressed to find the right door! And even more (or similarly) amazingly, Lola emerged from breakfast on the ground floor the next morning and knew, as we started down the long, large hallway, that there was a broken escalator ahead on the right. It was a long, long ways ahead - way out of sight. She must have remembered it from when we returned home that way the evening prior.
Lola continues to be a constant source of joy and delight and a little charmer - she has won over all of our security guards and building people, blowing them kisses, waving hello and goodbye, and giving out high fives freely when she marches in or out of the lobby. We are often stopped in our building or in the neighborhood park with a delighted shout of "Lola!" One of our neighbors is a sweet 3.5 year old who tells me solemnly when she sees me that she really likes Lola.
All of this is to say, I love this munchkin so, so much, and I am so proud of her and so honored to be her mama. She is such a treasure.
Lola learned to count from one to ten in both English and Mandarin a few weeks back, and now has taken to counting at warp speed and with a musical lilt. She surprised us out of the blue one day a couple of weeks ago by reciting, "A B C D" and now has gotten to "H" before she falters and switches to numbers. She has long been able to recognize red, blue, green, yellow, and orange and I think she has purple and pink down now also. If you offer her a selection of colors and asks her to pick, she can also deduce the right one by eliminating the colors she knows.
Lola can also sing the first two lines of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star in Chinese on her own. She can also fill in the blank if you continue singing the rest of the song. Whenever she sees a sheep now, she says "Baa baa black sheep!" very excitedly. She continues to love the happy birthday song and wants to wish (and sing) happy birthday to everybody. If she wants the heads, shoulders, knees and toes song, she will demand, "knees and toes!" Lola clearly loves music and songs - she learned a bunch of phrases from her Chinese songs as well, such as "shake hands," and "bend at the waist," and "how are you."
Lola loves books and is a great mimic of our expressions and words. Everyone says she has a real talent for language. When I sat down to flip through her Baby Einstein books with her this week, I realized to my shock that she knew practically everything on every page. Orange, duck, horse, pig, baby, swing, slide, ball, flower, car, tree, bird...and for every word she knows, she usually knows it in both English and Mandarin. Her vocabulary is pretty astonishing. She has started to put sentences together, including "I love you Mama" and "Go out to play"! When we were looking at a book together, she pointed out an escalator, then, noticing that it was blue, she said in Chinese, "lan se de dian ti" which translates to "blue escalator". It doesn't sound particularly difficult in English, but in Chinese, to use an adjective correctly, you have to know to put the adjective in front of the noun and use the modifier "de", which Lola did perfectly.
What makes Lola so special and funny though, is that she not only picks up words quickly, she really knows how to use the expressions correctly. It is a never-ending source of delight to us. For example, she always knows how to use "Ooops!" She has been saying it for a few months now in the context of a dropped item. More recently she picked up the word "aiya!" from Jovie. But she doesn't use it when she drops something or when she makes a mistake - she uses it to express her frustration. One of the best stories this month has got to be when Michael and Lola were reading "We're Going on a Bear Hunt." Lola is super, super excited about the page where they run up the stairs once they find the bear. She kept saying to Michael, "Up the stairs! Up the stairs!" But Michael had no idea what she was saying and kept trying to guess but was clearly not getting it. But Lola refused to give up, and kept pointing, and kept repeating herself. Finally, when Michael exclaimed in understanding, Lola put the book aside, threw out her hands in exasperation, and said in the loudest voice, "AIYA!" These adult mannerisms in such a tiny little munchkin... they really slay us.
Speaking of munchkins... on our trip to Macau, Michael referred to Lola as a munchkin, and she immediately picked up on the term and mimicked him, repeating munchkin a bunch of times. Today, I came home from work to learn that Lola said, "Lola, Lola, what do you see?" while reading her "Brown Bear Brown Bear" book. And guess what she answered to her own question? "I see a munchkin looking at me." I mean, I know I am coming across as a crazy doting mother right now, but that is clever!
Speaking of Macau... Lola is very observant. We had known this for a while because ever since she could talk she would point to different things and say who they belonged to - and she was always right. Mommy's purse, Tita's shoes, Daddy's glasses, etc. But her powers of observation really surprised us on this trip when, emerging from the elevator on our floor on our first day of our stay, Lola could pick out our hotel room door. How is that possible? We were about 15 rooms down from the elevator bank. The only thing I could see that might be helpful was that our door faced the hallway directly because it was where the hallway turned slightly. But even then - I think an adult would be hard pressed to find the right door! And even more (or similarly) amazingly, Lola emerged from breakfast on the ground floor the next morning and knew, as we started down the long, large hallway, that there was a broken escalator ahead on the right. It was a long, long ways ahead - way out of sight. She must have remembered it from when we returned home that way the evening prior.
Lola continues to be a constant source of joy and delight and a little charmer - she has won over all of our security guards and building people, blowing them kisses, waving hello and goodbye, and giving out high fives freely when she marches in or out of the lobby. We are often stopped in our building or in the neighborhood park with a delighted shout of "Lola!" One of our neighbors is a sweet 3.5 year old who tells me solemnly when she sees me that she really likes Lola.
All of this is to say, I love this munchkin so, so much, and I am so proud of her and so honored to be her mama. She is such a treasure.
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