Two-Word Phrase Phase?!

I've read a bit about the phase when they'll start creating two-word phrases. In fact, just last night, I read that the American Academy of Pediatrics suggests that children "should" be able to create two and three-word phrases by the time they reach 24 months. Naturally, I wasn't sure when our little Kaya would start doing this, since the word on the street is that it often takes longer for bi- and multilingual children to start speaking. But I think we've entered our next phase...!

The more comical story (of two) is one that also leads me to believe that she's nearing her potty training phase as well: I went into the bathroom this morning, and Kaya quickly followed me in, with grunts implying that she, too, wanted to be sitting on her potty (which is on the floor just across from ours). When I asked her if she wanted to sit down, she said, "Jahh", and motioned to sit...but then spotted her rubber ducky in the tub. Doing the same as she did yesterday, she grabbed the duck from her toy bin, and put it on her potty, saying, "a-a", meaning 'poop' in colloquial German. What was different about today is that she not only said, "a-a" as she set the ducky on the potty, but that she combined with it with "duck" as she set it over the hole, making for her first official two-word expression: "duhh a-a!"

How proud am I?! The daughter of a mother with irritable bowel and the mother of a daughter with lingual poop skills. =) Could life be better than this?

Similarly sweet, as Kaya and I were lying in bed this morning, she said, "dada...bye bye" just after he walked out the front door for work. The words were a little bit more separated than her duck and poop phrase above...but I think it qualifies, too.

She's comin' along with this language thing, mixing her languages as they are expected to do until about 3 1/2 years (though I'll have to check my numbers on that one). To her, they are all words...two names for any particular items are simply synonyms to her right now, and will continue to be for a few years. Hence, mixing is only natural--there's no reason to keep them apart, as far as her brain is concerned. Until then, she'll just choose to use the synonym that is easiest for her to say, like "duck" (vs. Ente) and "dauh" (dog, vs. Hund), or the one that she learns first, like "a-a" and "Affe".