Olympic performance update

The Winter Olympics are passionately ongoing, and so are our Multilingual Olympics, trying very much to stay in schedule and perform at our best!

• Among new words learn from Milo there are snow, please, friend, all with its Italian, French and Dutch counterpart. He’s actually sponging up vocabulary every day, he tunes in at whatever is being said and repeats virtually everything, which I believe it’s quite normal at 21 months. He does not repeat much of the English conversation he catches between myself and Milo’s dad, however his pronounciation in Italian is starting to have a distinct Anglophone accent.
  He has a harder time repeating certain sounds, so he make s up his own interpretation. A few example:
  -His name, Milo: he has been calling himself ‘Memo’, and lately that has shifted to ‘Mímio’ (we found it adorable and already elected it as his nickname, being Milo already so short!).
  -Amico (friend): he gets the meaning of the word, but says ‘pepípio’. He gets the right number of sillables and the musicality of the word, but he substitutes certain sounds with labial sounds.
  -Biro (pen) and other words with the “r”: he can’t roll the r, so he stretches the preceding vowel (biiiio)
  -Luce (light) is uu-chi
  
• On a good note, he’s more and more aware of the different identities that the same object has in our household. He proudly recites main, manina and handje (hand respectively FR, IT and D), or avion, aereo, vliegtuig (airplane).
  
• My Dutch efforts have stalled a little and I need to brush up; here are my next phrases for the week:
  Heel leuk u te ontmoeten (I'm very glad to meet you)
  Ik versta het niet (I don't understand)
  Ik begrijp het heel goed (I understand perfectly)
• The Italian conversations are also slagging behind, somehow it does not come natural. I guess we just have to go to Italy more often, then!

While we were watching the opening ceremony held in Torino on Friday, as the athletes were parading we cheered enthusiastically for all of them (I always get tear-eyed on these occasions!); however, when Italy paraded at last, I could not resist a spur of nationalistic pride and I involved Milo in a typical supporting cheer:

"I-TA-LIA! I-TA-LIA!" we screamed rhythmically, clapping our hands and stumping our feet.
Apparently, he enjoyed it: ever since, from time to time he shouts out “I-TA-LIA”! He even taught it to Antoine this morning (I hope his parents won’t think we’re brain washing their kid!).
The Belgian delegation paraded with a mere 8 athletes; if Milo will be any good in sports, then perhaps we will see him competing with the Belgian flag in 2022?!