Winston's Learning to Speak

Winston has been learning mostly Chinese, as the nanny speaks to him only in Chinese. I have been trying with a mixture of Chinese and English, but Chinese is winning right now. Still, occasionally he decides to say certain words in English, such as the numbers "two", "five" and "nine". But he prefers to say the other numbers in Chinese. Since his favorite activity is to find doors to open and close (preferably those with interesting door knobs), he learned to say "door" or "door door" in English. The nanny likes to tell him to poop by saying "chou chou" (in Chinese it means "stinky stinky"). And whenever he wants to enter the bathroom, the nanny would say "that's chou chou" (i.e. it's stinky there) to prevent him from going in. As a result, Winston's current vocabulary is a very complex mixture of English and Chinese.

The other morning, after he woke up, I took him out of his room and was changing his diaper in our bedroom. He looked around and realized that Michael was not in bed and turned his head to the direction of the bathroom, where he could hear some noise and see the light through the door - obviously Michael was in there. I asked him, "where is baba (daddy)?" He said loudly and clearly, "Baba Chou!" (i.e. Daddy stinky!) My heart always melts away upon hearing his adorable and crispy voice uttering such innocent and unintentionally creative words!