Oh .... my .... god ....

Well, it finally happened. For the past three months Liza has indicated she was finished with a meal by throwing all of her leftover food onto the floor, one piece at a time, while humming the inane "clean up" song I sing when I wipe off her hands and face. It was cute the first, oh, 100 times she did it, but I was getting tired of scraping peaches off the floor.

Today, however, when she looked like she was finished eating and about to start flinging, I asked her, "Are you all done?" And my daughter, perfect precious pearl that she is, emphatically made the sign for "All done" with such vigor that she damn near levitated out of her seat, all the while grinning maniacally and humming the clean up song. Holy cow, the kid is finally communicating!

And today when we've looked through her board books that show babies doing the signs for various meal- and bed-related activities, she's made pretty close approximations of about half of the signs, which is 10 or 12 more than she knew a week ago.

And after last week's experience telling me that every animal in her book said "Meeee-oooow," today she looked at each animal and said "baaaaaaa."

And today when I cut one of my dahlias to bring inside and show her, she touched it gently, just like I told her, and looked really surprised when I showed her that yes, this is a flower, and so are those things embroidered on her dress. When I asked her a few minutes later to point to the flower, she crawled over and stroked the dahlia ... despite the fact that she's probably never heard the word "flower" before today.

Not only is the kid tall, but she's a genius, too. Why do I have the feeling that she's going to be one of those kids who, once they start talking, don't ever stop talking except to sleep? I am so very much looking forward to 18 years of "mommy did you know that ants have 6 legs and spiders have 8 but cows only have 4 and people only have two and why don't we have six legs like the ants? I think that would be cool, even if it would be hard to find that many shoes that fit. Why don't we buy six shoes just in case I grow more legs tonight, mommy? Mommy? Why is that pillow over your head like that? Do you want me to go get your bourbon again, mommy?" Heck, anything is better than the screaming from this time last year.