I've just read two blog posts about baby talk (Mama on Undercover in Japan and Words and things on The Smell of Little Pong) and have to add my own experiences to that.

Not much has changed since my last and last but one posts that mentioned Yannick's speech development. He is still signing loads but not really talking. Only recently we've had a new addition to his repertoire of sounds which is 'oo oo'. This stands for 'woof woof' and comes out in addition to the sign every time we see a dog. He also tried to copy the sound of a ship on one of his toys which is a bit like 'hoot hoot', and guess what it sounds like when Yannick does the sound? Correct, it's 'oo oo'! In addition to these, he knows that anything dirty is 'bebe!' (just a German sound we do, in German I would spell it 'bähbäh!) and as this is an easy one we often get to hear that whenever he checks out the rubbish bin in the kitchen.

Yannick definitely understands a lot. I notice that when I ask him about where certain items are. If I ask him in the morning where his trousers, socks, or t-shirt are, he'll get them for me. He knows various body parts and other items that are important in his life, like wooden car, fire engine, motorbike, etc. He understands when I say no and often starts shaking his head in anticipation when he wants something that he is not usually allowed to have. Very fun to watch.

Yannick also seems to have understood that apart from signing there are two other languages in his life, German and English. He is a lot more talkative when there are more German speakers around and goes relatively quiet when I take him to an English language environment.

Back to talking. Even though Yannick is able to say 'mama' he has not copped on to the fact that he could call me with that. When we ask him where Papa (German for daddy) is, he usually points at Frank, but when we ask him about Mama, he quite often ignores the question. Maybe he's smart and thinks, why are they asking me that, she's right here, you stupid people, but to be honest I don't think he's got the connection quite yet.

And then we have 'dada'. Everybody keeps telling me that he can say daddy, *sigh*, but NO, he can't. As I just mentioned, in German we say Papa and he has never ever done that combination of sounds. The closest he got so far was 'baba' or 'bap', but these also don't seem to mean much, he's just practising. If anything da would mean there in German. However, when pointing at things we just get 'ah ah'.

As far as I can tell, 'baba', 'mama', 'yaya', and 'dada' are simply the sounds that come easiest to the little ones. I think all babies go through the same stages in sound development, and it's only the cultural/mother tongue influence that assigns the meaning to this babbling. If the baby is clued in he or she will pick up quickly what we think they are saying, but some don't… Usually Yannick gets away with 'ah ah' and pointing as we react very quickly to what he wants, so even for things where he knows the signs (like drink and eat) he doesn't have to make too much of an effort to get what he wants. Maybe we are simply too attentive?

I have to really switch mummy's hawks eyes on these days - something I'm not used to at all. Now that Yannick can walk he all of a sudden is also a lot more adventurous and enjoys climbing and exploring unknown areas. Two things happened already that gave me palpitations.

In the garden I was cutting some plants and Yannick was toddling about, like he did many times before. He was right next to me when he suddenly started screaming and all I could see was a bloody big toe and a stone the size of his foot next to it. I am not sure what exactly happened. At first I thought he let the stone fall onto his foot, but in that case I would expect the toe to go blue and green, which it didn't. It's far more likely that Yannick actually stubbed his foot on the stone or the big green storage box that he was walking around and caught his little toe nail on it. Ouch! On closer inspection under running water in the kitchen we saw that a third of the toe nail had come loose, but not totally off. Ouch, ouch, ouch!!! Yannick in his terror was trying to touch it and managed to fold it over, argh! So we folded the nail back, put something around the foot and took of for casualty, just in case. It was very empty there, thank goodness. They told us that the toe looked fine and that we should just keep it covered. The loose nail part will of course come off over the next week or so. Phew. I am just grateful that this happened with Frank in the house and the car being available. I am not sure how I would have managed without all of that.

The very day after I took him to a soft play area (foot covered up in sock obviously). There was a short course you could follow to get to some slides on the upper level. Yannick got lost and took the wrong turn, so I followed him up, only to see his head disappear through a hole in the padded floor and his feet follow immediately after. I was quite shocked to be honest and let out a little scream. About two seconds later I was at the hole and saw Yannick lying on his back on some kind of padded column, that was about 60 cm below the hole to climb down on. He looked completely befuddled. As he was slowly sliding sideways I grabbed him and allowed him to get down from the column top to the lower area (another 60 cm or so) that was packed with more padded cubes and other things. Nothing much could have happened to him there, but it was still quite frightening as I simply didn't know about that hole.

Yay, Yannick is toddling about when he gets into the mood. Right now crawling and cruising are still the fastest ways to go anywhere (and he is lightning fast when crawling), but walking has definitely been added to Yannick's modes of operation.

I've seen him walk for about two to four metres now, he's getting more daring by the day.

I've managed to catch a few steps on this video, but they are at the very end: