Nikolakis's Diary

When last weighed and measured in October I was 12 kilos and 83 cm in height. My grandma complains that I am too small for my age because I do not eat enough. Well, it's true that most clothes which are supposed to be for two-year olds are a bit too big for me, but there is still time for me to grow as big as my daddy.

And as for eating - imagine, I had to change from English food to Polish food and then to Greek food, all in a matter of weeks . Isn't that too much? After all, I'm only entering the world of different tastes and I need time to get accustomed to new dishes.

Also, there are so many other new things to learn.

Let me just tell you what I can do now:
I have successfully coped with learning to walk and run. That includes kicking the ball as well as climbing up the stairs, and walls made of ropes, also the slide (I love sliding down!). Everybody admires my dancing and I dance anything - Greek music as well as Irish, folk, film - it just has to have some rhythm and I'm ready. I also made some attempts to play music (percussion, piano, flute, harmonica among others).

Generally I am quite active. I can't sit in one place for long. I also don't sleep too long. I wake up around 9 am, have a siesta from 3-5 p.m. and then go to sleep at 11 p.m. I play a lot with my toys, with my dad. I read books with my mummy and grandpa. I go for a walk with my mummy and daddy or my grandpa and also for some shopping with my grandma (I always make her buy something for me - like bread with raisins or jelly gums).

I started producing some words, maybe not that many, but again I have been moving countries and changing language environments. Well, my father has always spoken to me in Greek and my Mum in Polish, but the people around me were speaking other languages. I started with chains of syllables like" "ta-ta-ta", with aspirated [t] sound, more like the English [t], than the Polish or the Greek one. Then [ma-ma-ma] followed - however, I haven't realised that 'mama' can mean "mummy". In Poland I used a lot [tio-tio], which functioned as a sort of demonstrative pronoun "this", similar to Polish "to" [to]. At the moment I speak mostly Greek, but I can also produce a very good "bye-bye" and "shoes" and Polish [auto] "car".

My mum is a bit disappointed that I speak so little Polish. Well, I do understand though everything she says but Polish is a bit difficult. Just imagine to say "jablko" [japko] while in Greek it's simply "milo" [milo], "pilka" [piwka] instead of "bala" [bala], "mleko" [mleko] instead of [gala], which I adopted as [lala]; [ia] instead of "dzien dobry" or "czesc" - I won't even try to show how these should be pronounced ... Not to mention that now everybody here speaks Greek, even my mum copes with that language somehow. I guess I just have to see my Polish family more often ...

Generally my parents say that I have started crying and being afraid more often than I used to. But that means that I'm growing and that I started understanding more. It is also my way to show them that I need them and also to check on how much I am allowed to do. Once when I fell down, I just got up and that was it. Now, depending on how big the fall was and how much it hurt, I can cry a bit, and then I come to mummy announcing that I have done [duk] (that's my little word for it), show her where it hurts and let her kiss it. Then I go to the "bad, bad" wall, or floor or whatever it was that I hit against, and make it [da] (that means that I punish it for hurting me - sometimes it hurts).

I make sure that my parents don't leave me alone, so I keep an eye on them all the time. OK, I like being with my grandpa and granny downstairs, but when my parents suddenly are no longer visible there, I demand that I am taken upstairs to [ma'ma] and/or [ba'ba].

Generally I am trying to demand things. Once it was others who said, e.g. "Eat this", "Do this". Now I say who does what: mummy is to change my nappies, grandpa is to read the Greek primary, today I want daddy to give me mandarines, while yesterday I could take it only from granny, etc.

When somebody says "no" to something I want, I instantly cry in the hope that either they will feel sorry or their ears won't survive the noise, so that finally I am allowed to do what I want. It doesn't always work though - the adults seem to be cleverer than I thought. But my smile usually works miracles - it's enough that I take my granny by the hand, smile and show her that I want chocolate from the fridge (oh yes, I know very well where good things are hidden), and 99% I will have it. Even if some time before she was complaining that I haven't eaten this or that. Still I am growing - I am now over 12.5 kilos, but I'm mainly growing in height - 89 cm now.

As to my recent achievements - first of all it's the rapidly increasing vocabulary. My mum actually can't manage to put down all the new words I produce. Anyway she thought of writing down the first 50 or 100 and then maybe just the most interesting ones. I understand both Polish and Greek but choose to speak mostly Greek, as most people around me speak this language. So when mummy tells me that a ladder is "drabina" in Polish I tell her that it's [kala] "skala" in Greek. At the same time I also correct my grandfather when he tells me that ['alogo] is a horse: Polish [kon] is much easier to remember and say. I don't know why words can't have just one, maximum two syllables. I am now developing a one syllable vocabulary and everybody seems to understands me: why to say "humos" [hi'mos] when I want juice, if I can say [mo] and still get one?

My increasing vocabulary is partly due to my imitating skill which I am perfecting now. Whatever somebody does or says, I am trying to do as well. My memory skill has also improved a lot. Auntie Marzena and uncle Andrew sent me a puzzle alphabet book with 24 sheep representing 24 letters and I know exactly where each sheep should go! Generally I just love books and puzzles and I know all my books, that is, I know which book to take to see vehicles or animals, which book has little poems that my mum reads etc. I am still a fan of Teletubbies and I gladly watch video with them (but that's rare, because my parents don't have a video and I have to visit my cousins to see the tapes) and the "Teletubby webpages" prepared by my mummy with goodies downloaded from the Teletubby site. Now I can name all four Teletubbies: [lala], [po], [pipi] and ... [pipi].