I'm 99% sure...

Quinlon said his first word today.


Ya-ya.

Which, in Chinese is the baby way of saying 'duck'. The real name is ya (yah) zi (tzuh), but ya-ya means duckie... get my drift?


There is a small pond/fountain on campus that has ducks and he LOVES them. We feed them almost everyday and today, when we turned the corner and he saw the pond, he started yelling "ya ya". Even the Chinese people there could tell he was saying duck. While we were tossing bits of cake to them he kept repeating "ya-ya". To prove he is doing it intentionally, we tried and tried to get him to say "ya-ya" the rest of the day to no avail. I am curious to see if he says it again tomorrow because that will clinch it for me.

The funny thing is, my first word was duck followed closely by Daddy.

Later today, he said Baba and ran over to DH (Chinese for Daddy and what we have called DH from early on).

Guess he takes after me in the talking department. I can hear my mom laughing all the way over here at this one because she knows what a nonstop chatterbox I was and is probably gloating at what is in store for me now.

For what it's worth, he has said a few things we've wondered about in English too. He goes to the fish tank and says "ishies" and has said "yesssssss" on a few occasions that have made us raise our eyebrows. It might just be parroting, but I definitely see a massive language breakthrough imminent.