MOOOooo?...

At an age of now almost 22 months, all three of the children are markedly more vocal than ever. Both Ella and Joel "talk" constantly, either in conjunction with holding a phone to their ear, reading out loud, or giving "lectures" or explanations to us or their siblings. Whenever Joel or Ella hears the words "clean up" or "aufräumen", they immediately begin to walk around the room chanting "'lean UP" while putting toys into plastic storage bins. Ella likes to try to sing along with the ABC song and Joel LOVES to dance when Ginger plays music for the children. Jade has had a lot of fun quizzing Grace on her animal sounds. In German, he can ask her:

• "was sagt die Katze?" / "what does the cat say?" ... and she answers: "MEOOW!"


• "was sagt der Hund?" / "what does the dog say?" ... and she answers: "Woof!"


• "was sagt die Kuh?" / "what does the cow say?" ... answer: "MOO!"

She manages close to 100% accuracy with those three animals. More than half the time, she can also correctly make the sounds for:

• das Pferd / the horse ... "NAY!"


• die Ente / the duck ... "kack"


• der Hahn / the rooster ... "doodle do!"


• der Löwe / der Tiger / der Bär ... lion / tiger / bear ... "RawR!"


• das Schwein / the pig ... "oiNK"

But, the remaining amount of the time, when she's either unsure or has forgotten, her default answer for ANY animal is always "MOOOooo?..." which trails off into a question mark.