In the orphanage when he was 3-years-old, Ary expressed himself in single Kazakh words, mostly nouns and some verbs. He knew the names of colors, animals, foods, body parts, clothing, toys, vehicles, playground equipment, other children in his group. He knew the words for basic movements like sit, come on, eat, potty, and even dance. His vocabulary was rudimentary and without apparent grammatical structure. He pointed to things and uttered simple words to get his meaning across to his caregivers who were referred to as "auntie."
Today Ary speaks in full English sentences. He can carry on a conversation and express his wants and needs quite specifically. Today he came in from playing outside and said to his mother: "Mommy, the ice cream truck is coming. I'm going have ice cream. I need money. I need 400 dollars." His vocabulary consists of adjectives and adverbs as well as nouns and verbs, indefinite and personal pronouns (although he generally refers to everything in the masculine), prepositional phrases, conjunctions and articles (although he frequently skips them when he talks in a hurry).
He can recognize and express emotions, which he could not do a year ago, and he engages in imaginative play, which was also not part of his language repertoire. He talks about nature and his environment; he distinguishes between different kinds of animals within the same genus and can make appropriate animal sounds and gestures; he argues with his mother (who is a lawyer) and invites "uncles" on the phone to come over and play with him; he asks questions about how things work and where things came from and when they arrived in his world; he explains why he does not like a certain food ("too spicy"); he comforts his mother when she hurts herself ("I'll kiss your finger and make it better"); he chastises the cats when they jump up on the kitchen table; he pretends to make a cake out of a handful of leaves; he offers to help around the house ("I'm going to open the door for you").