Zack has been with us for a little shy of 3 months. When we showed up at the Taiyuan Social
Welfare Institute on August 27th, I’m pretty sure that we were the
first English speakers that Zack had ever encountered. One of the most common questions people would
ask us in response to learning we were adopting a child from China was “does he
speak English”…sometime followed by “are you going to teach him to speak
English”. Here’s your sign. Yeah. Now
we get asked a lot – “How is Zack’s English coming along”. Well, here is your answer.
Fact: most people in
China do not speak English. Zack is from
a rural and pretty remote part of China.
We were not able to go to Yuncheng City while we were in China, but I
would venture to guess that you’d have a pretty hard time finding anyone who
spoke English. On “Gotcha Day”, Zack had
quite a bit of language and was speaking in sentences…not that we could
understand any of it. He quickly figured
out that we did not understand his words and started to use sign
language/motions to tell us what he wanted.
He kind of looked at us with an expression that probably meant “what
kind of dummies did they stick me with, anyway” and then he’d take me by the
hand and lead me to whatever he wanted me to see. If he wanted to go outside, he would bring me
my shoes and point to the door…stuff like that.
His receptive language took off almost instantly. By the time we left China, he understood
about three quarters of what we were saying to him. Now at 3 months home, he is talking quite a
bit. His favorite word seems to be “NO”
at the moment…I mean, come on…he’s 2.
Over the past couple of weeks, he has started to say yes and nod his
head. He will tell us when he is hungry
– he will say “eat” or “wa-wa eat”….he still does refer to himself as “wa-wa”,
which is Chinese for baby but when asked where Zack is, he will point to
himself. Occasionally, he will see a
picture of himself and say “Zack”. When
hungry, he will ask for a banana or yogurt or go to the cabinet where I keep
the oatmeal and tap on it and say “eat”.
He calls Henry “Henry” or “kitty” although that is a little hard to
understand. All drinks are “water”. He says apple, orange, cookie and cracker
pretty clearly...banana for whatever reason is.
He says “mama, daddy (although he still mostly calls Lee baba) and
sissy, of course. Most little kids are
“wa-wa or baby”. He points to his
nursery school building and says “school”.
He can say and identify a variety of animals (including Elmo and
monsters) and makes the noise that goes along with the animal. He says “big mess” if he gets food on the
floor or drags a bunch of toys out. He
says bed, night-night, bath and “brush teeth”.
He can point to most of his body parts when asked to identify them and
has taken to pulling his shirt up and saying “belly”. He’s started to speak in simple sentences…he
pointed to our bed the other day and said “mama/baba bed” and when I asked him
where Zack’s bed was, he ran in his room and pointed to his bed and said
“wa-wa’s bed”. The other night at
dinner, he pointed to me and said “mama eat”…it actually comes out as
“eateeeeeeee”. It’s cute. Today, he told me that Coco (his stuffed
bear) is in the Air Force. When I was on
adoption leave after we brought him home, he’d always ask where Lee was in the
morning and I’d tell him “daddy goes to work in the Air Force”. When we drive on base, I tell him “Air Force”. Coco slept with us (yes, sigh, all of us) in
our bed last night and for whatever reason, Coco was out of favor this
morning. Zack chucked her across the
room (the whole throwing toys things is something we have to work on) and said “Coco
Air Force”…which I think meant that Coco went to work. At the very least, she was removed from our
immediate presence.
Zack knows lots more nouns – potty, TV, trash…and some
concepts such as sleepy; stinky; clean up and around and around (or as Zack
says roundy round). He says “pew pew”
and wrinkles his nose if something smells bad.
He’s also very cognizant of what stuff belongs to who in the house –
which doesn’t mean he’s learned the boundaries as far as what not to touch. When I am folding laundry, he will tell you
what articles of clothing belong to which member of the household. He will point to things that he knows he is
not supposed to touch and say “mama’s”…doesn’t mean he won’t touch them.
Also…Zack will play by himself now and is not fixated on having
one of us attached to his hip at all times.
He will play in his room while I am taking a shower and will watch TV or
play with his downstairs toys while I’m in the kitchen or the dining room. For short periods, anyway. If we linger too long in another room, he
will come and check things out. This is
a good thing…he’s secure enough to know that just because he doesn’t have eyes
on us every moment does not mean we have left him.
So that is a quick update on Zack’s language development and a
couple of other tidbits. We were in the
hospital earlier this week – another story I haven’t written yet – and one of
the med techs was carrying Zack’s Thomas the Tank Engine backpack for us as we
went from the recovery unit up to orthopedics to have his cast put on and she
said “oh, he probably doesn’t really understand who Thomas is, does he?” Yes, Zack understands who Thomas is…and Elmo
and Mickey. He is doing just fine. Cheers!
Almost forgot - cuteness of the day! Enjoy!
Coco is eating...
This is the face I get when I ask Zack to show me his teeth...what a chees-er!
Jill
