There is a bunch of kakas on our tree

We have a tree just outside our windows, and it is a home to squirrels, sparrows, woodpeckers, and so on. Sasha enjoys keeping track of them. And every so often, he is sitting in his high chair and saying: "Kaka! Uh-oh!"

First, I thought that he pooped, because kaka is a Russian word for poop. But you will be surprised that this is Sasha's word for any kind of birds he sees.

The explanation for this is plain simple. Last fall, I used to take him to Cheeseman Park for a stroll and also for swinging. In Cheeseman Park, there are many crows, and so I taught Sasha that the crow (in Russian - ворона) says: "Karrr! Karrr!" ( I understand that it says: "Caw! Caw!" in English, but you will be surprised how different the sounds of animals are from one language to another). It took him 2-3 months to connect the dots, and it wasn't until January of this year when, upon arriving to Cheeseman Park, he started saying: "Ka! Ka!" as imitation of crow's cry. (Sasha cannot roll his Rs, yet. It takes Russian children years before they can.)

Now, since we moved to our new apartment with a tree outside our window, I realized that he quickly learned to generalize, and he is now using crow's cry to name any bird he sees. 

This is typical for his age. According to Barbara Zurer-Pearson, as well as to Dr. Harvey Karp (check out his book "The happiest toddler on the block"), between one and two years of age, toddlers ascribe multiple meanings to the same form (form is sounded word or a sentence, or a sign). Sasha does the same with ASL sign "more". While most of the time he uses it to ask for more of whatever, now and then, he uses it to ask to read a book. This is how he originally learned the sign. He would cry because a book would be over, and Greg would teach him to use the sign to ask for more. There are occasions when he brings us a random book and signs: "More!", meaning: "Read this book!"

Either way, Sasha's use of the word kaka creates a lot of confusion for his parents, because he has been known to use it in context of going on the potty, and now there is "Kaka! Uh-oh!". My translation for that is: "Birds! Where are the birds? They are gone! Birds fell down!"