shhh, don't speak

our child is a social child. at the tot lot, she will cruise right on up to the big bad 2 and 3 three year olds and proceed to reach out and wave at, touch on, hair-pull or shout near them. this mystifies me. my entire life was lived in unspeakable dread of the older kids. to this day when i find myself meeting people who were just one grade above me in school, i strike a submissive pose and show them my belly. anyway, the baby likes older kids.

she also likes to talk. oh man, we got a talker on our hands. i cower in fear of our phone bills 12 years from now.

please don't mistake this as bragging ... it's just the truth: she's working on her first word. when she gets it right, i am pretty sure it will be "cat." she is freakin' obsessed with our two obese slow-moving felines. every mealtime consists of me desperately attempting to flag her attention away from the cats in order to sneak some of mom's tasty homemade niblets into her mouth. fortunately she gets so slack-jawed hypnotized by the cats that i could sneak a buick into her mouth without so much as a whimper of discomfort.

so i decided to turn lunchtime into a learning opportunity. every time she gets focused with hubble-like precision on her furry friends, i slowly and clearly enunciate CAT. "do you see the CAT?!" "are you looking at the CAT?!" "who wants to claw your face off to death? is it the CAT?"

this week it began: she started repeating me. i say "CAT." she replies "TA!" (hey, it's a start.) sometimes the response is "TA-ck." other times it's "CKKKKU!" occasionally she even says: "GGGG TA MAMA FMF FADSKj iiijIGHSAKGG blllll." obviously no matter how you slice it, she's trying to say "cat." i know this because if i try to catch her off guard, like when she's in the bath, by suddenly shouting "where's ... the CAT?!," she'll start looking around the room, in search of her first love. when she sees one of them, she waves at it and says "GLLLLLLLLA SCHHHVEISS!" mrs nice guy is convinced that the baby speaks fluent german.

so, she understands words. this is not entirely new: for a while now she has made it plain that she knows what her name is. she always turns her head when she hears it (and then she makes a disappointed face as if to say "crap! i must remember to never let on how much i know.") she also knows the word "dance." if she's standing and propped up against the couch and hears the word "dance," she will grin, drool and begin bouncing up and down. do you have any idea how many times a day i delight in shouting "DANCE FOR ME MONKEY GIRL!" ... and then watching her actually do it? i love it. please don't send me to jail.