About a week ago, Amber figured out how to sing. The first I heard her carry a tune (well, there was one incident well over a year ago, before she could even talk, when both Vera and Victoria reported that she hummed a clear few notes of something), she sang "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", pretty much fully developed. Well, her pitch was pretty random, and she was bluffing through a lot of the sounds, but she knew the whole thing. "...up-a buv-a wuh-so hi, lyk-a di-ma in-a sky..."

She talks a lot now, and shows surprising comprehension and initiative. Earlier this week I picked her up at daycare and as soon as I put her in her car-seat, she squirmed out. I couldn't reach her over the seat, so I went over to the other side of the truck to get her, and by the time I got there she was crawling over the center console up into the front seat. "Amber a-grive!" she said, climbing into the driver's seat. She says D's like G's right now; I first started to understand when she would have a piece of paper and a pen, and she would give it to me saying "graw, daddy!"

She uses a lot of direct address. When I'm carrying her down stairs or on some unstable surface, she often says "be careful, daddy".

She still doesn't have quite all the sounds down, and she has her own words for a few things. Milk is "mokoko", a simplification of the Ukrainian word for it, but she also understands "milk" if you say it.

One of her favorite things to say is "water bottle", which she says with absolute clarity and diction. She also likes "swimming pool" - and indeed, she really likes to go to the swimming pool. Vera started taking her to "lessons" a few weeks ago, and it's probably her favorite thing to do right now.