Sitting on the floor, laughing

This is what we do.

Dan and I sit on the floor, and watch Vi wander around the house. We hear her silly soliloquy of thoroughly-enunciated nonsense words, and repeat the noises back to her as if they were real words and we're seeking clarification or remarking on her insight. It often sounds like "Philadelphia Gilda Radner Lovenox?" or "Botox Zimbabwe, uh-huh, I know..." She stumbles around, tries to run, chases the dog, casts us a knowing glance with nose wrinkled, kisses the cat, pauses for a snack, then keeps moving. She's VERY BUSY. She seems to be saying, "Are you getting this? I'm hilarious."

Vi has three official words, in order of frequency:
1) Woof
2) Meow
3) Down (which comes out as "goooowwwww," always slightly growled.)

"Meow" started out as "now," with a long, drawn -out but not stuttered "n," said in the sweetest tone of voice. "Woof" comes out whenever she hears a dog barking - which, in our neighborhood, is very often.

Vi has picked up on some sign language, too. Some of our friends are doing the baby sign language thing, some are doing ASL...we're not REALLY doing either. It looked really interesting, so I decided to try a couple of signs that I looked up online at http://www.aslpro.com/cgi-bin/aslpro/aslpro.cgi. Obviously, we started with dog, cat, and down. She picked up dog within three or four days, and started using it for everything furry. She would point at a cat and sign dog while saying "nnnnnow." So, we started showing her the sign for cat pretty diligently. She resisted for a long time, then suddenly, this weekend, she got it. Down is pretty easy - pointing down. We also looked up food, more, water, airplane, mother and father. She will sometimes do the food sign, will usually repeat the sign for more when we ask if she wants more while signing, and makes her own special hand-in-the-air gesture whenever she sees a plane.

It really amazes me, how much she is learning, how much she can learn, how much she is innately capable of doing. Some times we are too tired to chase her, so we literally just sit on the floor and allow ourselves to be entertained. She was so silly tonight - crashing into things then giggling, walking around holding a book in front of her face, chasing the dog, screaming out the back door, climbing over and around me...at one point she fell down on her bum and just started laughing. I couldn't help but join in, and we went back and forth giggling at each other for several minutes.

Suddenly I don't have a baby - I have a child. And she cracks me right up.