What language does he babble in?

That's a good question! According to Barbara Zurer Pearson, Ph. D., "there is no reflex to say 'gooh'" ("Raising a bilingual child", Living Language, 2008). So, that means that every time Sasha is babbling he is trying to say something or, at least, practicing the sounds he heard. With my linguistic mind in action, I can imagine that, if he is practicing the sounds he heard from us, he should have a nice stew of English and Russian.

Also, recently, he started making sounds that sound like a truck or a car or a lion roar (I am sure that he has seen trucks and cars, but lions at this point are only toys). I cherish the hope that he is practicing to roll his Rs like in Russian. I am encouraging him by roaring with his Mishka Gutenacht (a teddybear from Germany), with his plastic lion and with his tractor. We shall see if that will help.

Rolling Rs is kind of important in Russian language. If you don't, then you have a speech problem. People cannot differentiate between your Ls and Rs when you talk. I had that until I learned to roll my Rs with my aunt when I was six, which is pretty late. My brother, now a grown man, has not been able to roll his Rs, so far. So, I wonder if speech problems like this one can be passed on to the next generation. Let's hope that Sasha learns to roar just like Mishka Gutenacht.