I've put a photo album together with photos of our relatives in Germany, so that I can teach Yannick who they are before we get there. Even though he's seen my mum, my sister, and my nephew before he's not very likely to remember them all. Maybe my mum, but not the others.

So we take a look at the photos every second day or so and I tell him the names of the people on the photos. Then I ask him where is 'X', e.g. 'Elke' (my sister) and he more or less successfully points them out.

He also started trying to say their names. This is what I get when I ask him 'who is this':

Yannick - points to himself
Oma Gertrud (my mum) - Oo-ma! at first, but now some stuff that sounds vaguely like Gertrud.
Oma Karin (Frank's mum) - At first this Oma was accepted as Oo-ma! too but then I got more than just once: Mama! This is a bit worrying!
Elke (my sister) - Ette
Edgar (my sister's partner) - Edda
Nico (my nephew) - You guessed it: Noni

After a conversation with a mummy friend about how many words her daughter knows I started noting down all the words and signs Yannick comes out with. Not to compete, simply because I like to make lists for a start and I was also interested in keeping this information. If I'd waited any longer, I would have forgotten.

I was astonished! I got together a list of 40 different things (words, animals sounds, and signs) almost immediately and then the following day another 20 or so came up, it was just amazing. Some words are always signed, some are done by sign and word, and most are nowadays simply spoken words. He learned almost all of this during the last two months! In addition he's coming out with new things every day, trying to repeat words I say as well. OK, not everybody would know what he's saying as it's still pronounced in his baby way, but I know exactly what he's on about in about 95% of all cases, simply by context and paying close attention.

I told our Sing & Sign teacher today how much he communicates and she was well impressed as apparently for a child of this age an average of 10 words is expected by the health visitors. We talked about this as our teacher was wondering about his command of English as he always seems to know what she wants of him. We are only speaking German at home so that's a very legitimate question. Well, he's watched those English language Sing & Sign DVDs up and down almost every day (one per day!), so something is getting stuck in his little head. He even started to say bye bye now (instead of the German version, tschüß). The weird thing is that Yannick didn't seem to take in much of the signs (and words) at all before well into the second season of the Sing & Sign classes, and now it's all happening at once.

I love this speaking thing, it's so much fun!!!

Finally, I managed to upload all missing photos of Yannick. Yay!

I am utterly confused by this habit of the British people.

Everybody knows the Brits are driving on the left, while continental Europe is driving on the right. Back home in Germany I not only learned to drive on the right, but also to walk on the right. I always assumed that would be same here, meaning you drive on the left and walk on the left. Well, it doesn't seem like that.

I really don't care too much about this when I am out on my own, but whenever I am out with the pushchair and try to keep to the left there are people coming from the opposite direction who don't take any notice of me and that big ship: I have to move out of THEIR way. This really annoys me as the pushchair is quite heavy with Yannick in it and I would expect them to be a bit more considerate. But on top of that annoyance I have this niggling feeling that I simply don't understand the road rules properly. Can anybody enlighten me?

I finally got my act together and started publishing some Yannick photos again. I had stopped sometime in July, and now we have November! A couple of days ago I added some more July photos and last night I added all worthy photos for August. So, please take a look at my little cutie pie!

This year we made it down to the huge charity bonfire that is done every year in Winchester around 5 November (Guy Fawkes day). As it was done on Saturday it coincided with my birthday, which was fun as nothing else was going on that day. They even sang Happy Birthday for a girl who turned 12, so I could imagine it was for me.

Anyway, there was a massive crowd, the guy on the microphone said there were about 20,000 people. I carried Yannick in the pouch as that was much easier than to navigate a pushchair through the masses. I also figured that he would prefer that, thinking of him hardly ever being outside when it's dark. He was fascinated by all the torches and the people but didn't pay too much attention to the actual bonfire.

After half an hour of bonfire we decided to leave (I had my mum with me) and watched the 20 minute fireworks from outside of our house. It was lovely but you just wonder how much it costs. The whole show was put on to collect money for charity so at least all this money wasn't burnt in vain.