Two years old! (Updated with five whole words!)

Clara is two years old today!

We had the great luck this weekend of having a visit with Tanja's PhD adviser and her family (Maribel, Martin, and Lucia). Lucia is one of Clara's "twins," all three girls were born on November 2, 2007. To celebrate, here are pictures of Clara with her twins. The first two are with her cousin Lyric (in Canada two weeks ago), and then several of Clara with Lucia (this weekend).


Playing in Lyric's fantastic fold-away school bus:


Clara and Lucia meeting for the first time in over a year:


Setting up the table for play:


Sharing so nicely! (It's probably obvious, but I'm saying things like "wer ist dran?" "who's turn is it?" Lucia is also bilingual, but Spanish-German rather than English-German.)



Who wants birthday cupcakes?!




Going outside:


Happy Birthday girls!


I haven't written anything about Clara's development for a while, but she continues to amaze! She's always saying funny and/or interesting things. For example, last night she invented the German word "cupkuchen" based on the English word "cupcake". She also comes up with her own interesting games all the time. She got a flower toy in Canada that has a really long stem (50cm?), and one day when I was vacuuming Clara suddenly came around the corner mimicking me by using the flower as a vacuum. She really really loves to read, and knows lots of her books by heart. Often when we're discussing something Clara will suddenly jump up and run to the bookshelf, presumably thinking "I have a book about that!" So if someone mentions geese she'll find a book with a picture of geese. Here are two videos of Clara reading with me.

Clara reading in English.

Clara liest auf Deutsch.

(I can't believe how shockingly bad my pronunciation is in the German video - I hope it was only because I was devoting too many brain cells to also holding the camera and the book, and not because I usually make such mistakes! denkst for denkt, isht for ich's, argh!)

Language update:

Tonight Clara said a five word sentence! Clara had just gone on the potty, so I had taken a small toy away from her (leaving her with a big toy that can't fall through the crack!). Clara asked for the toy back by pointing and saying "give me this one too!"

I posted the videos above showing Clara reading, but we've noticed something really interesting with a few of the books. While she obviously likes the rhymes, and learns from them, she clearly understands what a lot of the words mean. We can tell this because of a few mistakes she's made, especially with the "Emma" books.

One rhyme she's gotten wrong from "Emma isst" (Emma eats) goes:

Viele Sachen schmecken lecker.
Ob vom Markt oder vom Bäcker.

(Many things taste tasty.
Whether from the Market or the Baker.)

Clara replaced "lecker" with "gut" ("tasty" with "good").

Tonight there was a new one when we read "Emma weint" (Emma cries):

Teilen ist nun wirklich schwer.
Aber Fuchs mag Emma sehr.

(Sharing is really difficult.
But Fox likes Emma a lot.)

And Clara replaced "sehr" with "viel" ("a lot" with "much").

I think it's interesting because she replaced the rhyming word with one that she must intuitively understand better. But she must also understand what "sehr" means, because she replaced it with a word that has almost the same meaning (but which happens to be ungrammatical in that sentence).

She also corrected my German tonight (in my defense, I was reading in the dark with the page facing Clara!). I said

Knallerote Nudelsoße
ist an Nase, Bauch und Hose.

(firetruck-red pasta sauce
is next to the nose, belly, and pants)

And Clara corrected me - it's supposed to be "auf," not "an" ("on" rather than "next to")!

I guess this means that she's learning proper German despite her father making lots of mistakes!

Finally, she's having huge sleep troubles lately (the past month). I'm guessing it's probably linked to the developmental stage (language explosion!!!) that she's found herself in. Luckily she's still (mostly) sleeping through the night, it's just that sometimes it takes up two two (or even, shudder, three) hours to finally get her sleep!