Language Development

Although before our trip to ukraine and russia liza spoke english words only, her russian has developed rapidly during the trip.
For the last couple months her language skills has tramendeously increased. She can repeat now any word in russian or english. She is saying short sentences; demonstrates interest in reciting poems, singing songs, telling fairy tales, and simply talking.

Babies and toddlers are learning though observing adults. They can't observe there own behavior and learn though self-analysis.

I let my 14 months old daughter watch two cartoons today, one was about cat and mice (Russian cartoon "Kot Leopold") and the other one was about a monkey mother and her babies. I can definitely see myself in the character of the monkey mother and my baby in the characters of the baby-monkeys. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rd1dQXhgNEk&feature=related
The interesting thing is that my little one was not interested in the second cartoon at all. 

25 months and reasoning

I've noticed that my toddler understands the not to-dos supported by reasoning and changes her behavior. For example, when I just say "don't do this or that", the "no" would mean nothing to her and would not change her behavior. However, if I explain to her why it is bad to do this or that, she stops doing this or that. So, it looks to me like the reasoning helps my toddler to understand why she should not do certain things and change her behavior.

Elizabeth's 1st sentence @ 21 months

I wanna this!

How to control your kid's internet life.

The U.S. Government offers a section on appropriate sites by age at Kids.gov.

21 month achievemnts

Elizabeth has started to say "da."  It replaced the "no" partly, that is too many "das" but the know exists as well.
The "poka poka" is now in her lexicon as well.
In general, new words are coming slowly.

My toddler and car sit.

I have been having real hard times to make her sit in her car sit to go somewhere. Her constant resistance to get into the car sit voluntary makes me feel like stay at home all time but it is impossible, we have toddler classes, meet with friends, or just have to go shopping or do some errands.  So I brainstormed many options how to solve this problem and found some tricks I would like to share:
1. let her play for some time inside the car before  the car sit
2. turn on music
3. ..

18 - 19 weeks old novalties

started to eat bread with butter.

can put some words together like: more crackers.

says more words, mostly in English: shoes, foot, food, etc.

Articulation of old words is better now (in both languages)

Repeats after adults many words and sounds.

Likes to put small things inside boxes.

Interested in farm animals.
Imitates actions of adults. like sit in a chair in the library with a romanic novel in her hands.

18 months

fully potty trained
interested in getting dressed by herself, tries to put on cloths and shoes.