kids words

We've been keeping track of Oscar's words as we did with Clara's, but we started writing them down much earlier.  We had heard that second children and boys usually start speaking later than first children and girls, so we were a bit surprised at how much more quickly Oscar began speaking.  He's up to about five dozen words now, and he reached this total about two months earlier than Clara did.  Part of this could be that we simply started tracking Oscar earlier, and some of the words he used to say he doesn't say much anymore (we didn't include these for Clara).

Anyway, for those who are interested, here is a comparison of the first words of the kids, and their language breakdown.  You'll need to click on it to be able to read everything:

It's fun to look at the list and speculate on why each kid learned what they did when they did.  It's not at all surprising that Oscar learned "aua" (ouch) and "mine!" earlier...

And I wonder if Clara learned "taxi" so soon because of all the moving we did when she was so little?

January was a busy month, and Tanja did an amazing job of getting Oscar night-weaned.  He's now sleeping much longer stretches in the night, and usually has a stretch with from about midnight to five in the morning without waking up at all.  He's also a lot easier to get to sleep in the first place, and when he wakes up before midnight it's usually very easy to get him back to sleep now.  But between the weaning, travel, and Oscar getting a cold at the start of February we haven't had much time for photos or blogging.  Oscar is also eating really well now (no longer playing on his high chair), and this evening he actually ate a huge amount of food using a spoon with almost no help from Tanja.

Here is Clara a few weekends ago:

and here are some watercolors she did one day when Kristina was babysitting here: