Yeah, please

I was a little worried a few months ago when I heard parents start to prompt Ruth Anne's little friends to say "please" and "thank you". Then all of the sudden about a month ago, her demands for food, drink and toys suddenly became much, much clearer and much, much more insistent.

One of the beauties of English-Russian bilingualism is that the Russian word for "gimme" is "die." Hearing your toddler shout "die, die" is a particular good incentive to start training her to say "May I have..." but all the usual whining is enough to insist on hearing "please."

Now before, when we weren't always sure what Ruth Anne wanted we'd ask "Are you talking about raisins?" "Are you talking about sitting on the potty?" "Are you talking about going outside?" If we guessed wrong, she'd scream "no-no," of course. If we guessed right, she'd say "okay" like it was our idea in the first place but she was willing to go along with it. This made it extremely difficult to explain that we'd heard, understood, and considered her request but couldn't fulfill it - along the lines of "What do you mean 'no' you just said 'You want a cookie?'"

Now the situation is completely reversed. Ruth Anne's new form of assent is "yeah, please". She not only gives this answer when we ask her "Do you want some grapes?" or "Would you like to go to the pool?" She also says, "yeah please" when we ask her things like, "Do you mind if...?" and "Is it okay if...?"

A few other quirks of Ruth Anne's current level of language development:

(1) Ruth Anne says both "thank you" (English) and "speciba" (Russian) but she also expresses gratitude (often the most sincere gratitude) with the word "kushum" leaving us uncertain whether to answer "your welcome" or "pajolsta."

(2) Her favorite color right now is orange. It isn't that she knows her colors that well but there's an orange ponytail holder that she's crazy about. She calls it "orange": "Orange - on?" There are also some nice orange socks but she just calls them "socks" or "eta socks."

(3) She also loves bubbles. Bubbles blown from a wand. Bubbles from soaping up the hands. Bubbles in the swimming pool. Bubbles in carbonated mineral water. You name it. Bubbles.

(4) She's taken to playing with her food instead of just pushing her plate away and announcing that she's "finished". I don't always catch this early enough. In some cases where she just starts moving soup to a plate or bread to a bowl I don't even recognize it for what it is. Twice now she's started finger painting on her shirt with yogurt while singing, "Pamoi, pamoi". This means "wash, wash."

(5) When Mehri asks Ruth Anne, "Ti hochish..." (Do you want?) Ruth Anne keeps the verb in the second person form. At first I thought this must be because she hadn't heard the first person "Ya hochoo" enough, but then I heard Ruth Anne's little friend whose mother is a native Russian speaker do the same thing. Now my theory is that conjugation is just outside their current level of language development and will come along naturally in its own time.