mylène daily

During the past month we haven't stopped making pictures, but I admit that I am a bit behind in putting them online. You can now check out some new ones on the Flickr site, by clicking the link on the left.
Here are a few nice ones already as an apetizer.

Nowadays, it is very funny to listen to Mylène. She knows how to say several real words, and knows a lot of words in her own language. She is quite talkative, especially when she is reading a book on her own. She then imitates us, telling her about the pictures in the book, and pointing at them. She does that too, and she is talking to herself while doing so.

Here is a summery of the real words she knows:

'Dag dag'
This is Dutch and means 'goodbye'. This was the first word she knew. It was gone for a while, but now it's back
'Bye bye'
A big surprise for us, because neither one of us really taught her this. But now, she often says 'bye bye' when leaving, making waving gestures together with it. Of course, when people see this, the melt on the spot :-)
'Gou gou'
Chinese for 'dog'. Mylène's companion for the night is a soft beige dog. She also knows what the dog says 'whooh-whooh'
Other animal sounds she knows, are 'ka-ka' for duck and 'hgrrr' for tiger.
'Baby'
She got to know this from a picture she has of a baby doll. Shiqi said 'baby' and after that she apparently knows what 'baby' is. When she sees a small kid somewhere, she points and says 'baby'.
'Mama'
A real word, but Mylène uses it wrongly. If she wants something, she will point to it and say 'mama'. Well ... perhaps not so wrongly used anyway.
'Papa'
She says it often, but we did not figure out yet, what she is using it for. Sadly though, not for her papa.

Of course, she understands much more. We notice that she already understands quite a bit of both Chinese and Dutch, although she does not always show it. But this is strategy, I guess.

Since Mylène has arrived in Fuzhou, she has been practicing her walking skills a lot. And with very good results. About two weeks ago, she made her first steps without being held. She is a very careful girl, though, so she still feels that she needs at least one hand to hold her while walking. But, she likes it a lot!

Our furniture has not arrived yet, so the house is practically empty. For Mylène this is ideal for crawling around and for practicing walking. One of the things she likes a lot, is walking behind a small plastic red chair. We have a stone floor, which is quite smooth, so pushing the chair forward is very easy.

Besides that, we walk with her a lot, inside and outside, holding her with one hand. Mylène is always saying: "yi, er, yi, er, yi, ..." when she is walking like that, meaning "one, two, one, two, ..." in Chinese.

We practice the walking without supporting hand inside, on a soft bottom, letting her walk from mama's arms to papa's arms, and vice versa. Mylène is so proud when she succeeds in walking some steps alone.
One time, we practiced in a nearby park. Christoph and Luciana made a short movie clip of it.

Last week, Mylène met Santa Claus, as I wrote on the other blog. And Mylène was crying.
This week, she also got the chance to meet Sinterklaas (yes, the are both in China!!), and ... Mylène was crying again.
Usually, she has no problems socializing with strangers, but strange old men, with a big beard and peculiar clothes is not her thing. I guess we should be happy about this.