Thursday, January 05, 2006

Counting with Milo

When I was pregnanat, Milo's dad woud periodically count to the belly up to five, in Dutch. It was his way to start communicationg with the baby. He continued doing so once Milo was born, parading him the fingers one by one. Ever since Milo has been talking, he's been waiting anxiously to collect the fruits of his hard work! But for some reason, only number 5 (vijf) seems to have stuck to him. So, no matter how many fingers Daddy shows him, Milo says "vijf!"

I'm less left brain and have not any particularly emphasis on numbers in Italian, but at bath time, I always say: "Uno, due, tre..." and then I lift Milo and put him in the tub. In Italian, it's 2 (due) which stuck to him. So if I show him any finger combination, it's always :"due!"

He's also starting to associate numbers with the written symbols, especially in the morning when he's waiting for his milk bottle to warm up in the microwave and he sees the clock displaying the decreasing seconds: it's either "due, due, due, due due!" or "vijf ,vijf ,vijf!" depending upon who is with him!

...This time the score is: Dutch vs Italian 5-2!

3 comments:

giovanni said...

I think little Milo is clairvoyant : he gave you my birth date ! Due vijf. Only the year is still missing. I think it will take some time before he reaches that number... It's a combination of two numbers, the one being twice as much as the other. If Milo would pronounce due with a Dutch accent it would become "push", and push with a Dutch accent "poes", and... je m'arrete

Juliet said...

Have you asked him to find various numbers on a piece of paper or in a book? We learned that William knows all his numbers that way. It wouldn't surprise me if Milo does as well.

Clo said...

Giovanni, what a coincidence...let's see if he comes up with the year in French and English, then!

Dalian, thanks for the suggestion. We have a book with numbers and animals, we'll start showing him more frequently...but att his stage I am not so worry that hearns how to count, he's still 20 months! It's just curius how he remembers 2 different numbers in Dutch and Italian!