Kid.

She walks like a pro, as if she’s been doing it for years—professionally, even—and will not keep her glasses on, which is almost as irksome as the fact that she still doesn’t eat. But it’s hard to stay mad at someone so cute.

She is getting long curls of hair on the sides and at her nape, but despite the party in the back, the front is still all business, if by “business” you mean “bald.”

She says “SHUUSS” (shoes) “DEH DA” (Daddy) “BUH” (button—the girl loves buttons) “BA BA” (bottle, and also me, wtf), BEH BEH (baby), HAH! (hot), and GEH-TUH (kitty). She says something that sounds uncomfortably like “SHIT,” and has a favorite expression: “SHIH-SHUUUH!” We don’t know what it means, but she says it very earnestly.
She says and waves “BUH BAH!”—cheerfully but pointedly—at the nanny as soon as I return home.

When asked for their location she will point to her nose, her ear (smacking self emphatically on side of head), and her teeth. Eyes are still a mystery and get the EAR smacking again, but I’m not sure I want her jabbing fingers eyeward anyway, so there’s no rush.

She loves any ball or ball shaped item (“BA! BA! BA!” she cries, pointing at the red cement spheres at the entrance to Target), and one of her current favorites is a spherical lip balm I brought back from BlogHer. I have tried explaining that this is not, strictly speaking, a ball, but she waves me aside, bored by my narrow interpretation of the concept. If you really want to make her happy, give her a whole orange—IT’S A BALL THAT SMELLS GOOD. The downside of this is that you will never be able to eat an orange in her presence again.

She adores her baby–a small doll–and anything vaguely baby-esque, including a blonde Playmobil figurine. She kisses these babies on the face, and entreats you to kiss them as well, again and again. This makes her squirm with glee, and tilt her head coquettishly to the side.

She knows to put the phone to her ear, if by “ear” you mean “neckish area.”

She likes to carry around a long xylophone mallet, or plastic cups to put things in (wee spoons, more of the omnipresent balls.) She gets overexcited and shrieks when we play catch.

Despite her distaste for human food, she is constantly trying to get at the cats’ bowls to consume a handful of dessicated fishmeal pellets, or whatever it is that they eat, and she is starting to throw little mini-tantrums when she doesn’t get her way. I am told that this is to be expected. She does not listen to reason, and wouldn’t do so even if she knew what it was.

She loves music, sweet soul music, any kind of music, and frequently adds new dance moves to her repertoire. She claps along to “Private Eyes,” though not at the appropriate intervals. When we praise her, she gives herself a round of applause.

She has learned that she can scream piercingly, and occasionally does: standing on the bed, flinging her arms joyfully into the air before flopping onto the mattress.

She knows to be “gentle” with the cats, and pets them with a sort of “Wax On, Wax Off” motion. She gives kisses, and while she still blatantly, fervently prefers her father to me, at night I am the one whose hair she must fondle and press her face into before she can fall asleep, curled under my arm, and if she wakes she reaches out to do it again. While I have no proof of this, I like to think that a disembodied wig would not give her the same comfort.