Ayla speaks!

Hi everyone. I know we have been delaying this for a while, a lot has changed since last we wrote in this blog, but many of the changes are gradual and slow - we don't have an exciting update every couple of weeks like we did when Ayla was just born. Ayla will turn two in a couple of weeks. It's been an exciting year. The biggest development is in her mental capacity. She is becoming smarter as she grows and amazes us each time. She hears only Hebrew from her father, and only Polish from her mother. Currently she probably understands more than 300 words in each language, and can speak almost 200 in each. Twice a week she goes to day home with our downstairs neighbour, Niko, which speaks to her in German, so she can also understand German sentences. English is her weakest language (though that will probably change once she goes to a public school or kindergarten). She knows a few words here and there, mostly from talking to her three year old friend Kalindi. Basically she can communicate her wishes, and understand what is basically going on and what is asked of her. around 19 months she said her first basic sentence (Bye-bye Abba), and a month and a half later her first complex sentence (Laika rotza ochel - Laika wants food). She knows that objects have different words in different languages, and that you say one word to abba, and another to mama. She doesn't really get confused between the languages - she knows which word belongs to which language, though she might sometimes forget which language is appropriate at that moment. As for sentence structure - she knows that there are different types: 'this is' 'thoos iz' 'tu est' 'ze shel' , and occasionally needs to be reminded which belongs to which language. She sometimes just says a generic 'tdza se' which everyone understands, but that's more from wanting to conserve words than from not understanding the difference. Okay, now for some photos, and we'll get back to observations on her development in the next post: Around August we were invited to a celebration in the local Hindu temple by Niko and Kumar (parents to 3 year old Kalindi and 1 year old Anisha). Ania dressed in her Sari, and ayla got her own special bindi!