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!!!