Before my lunch break ends, an update on Veronica:

She's talking. Kind of. We think.

What's happening now is quite a bit more definitive than the "Hi!" she gave me on October 4. But even then, are we just imagining it? Or is she really making a connection between seeing something and what it's called?

Here's the first scenario: She has this activity center. Picture a walker, only with little toy attachments all around it, and no wheels. Two of the attachments are rubber teddy bears. Every time she grabs one in particular, I've been saying "bear."

Now she grabs this particular toy, when placed in the center, and says "Beah." Over and over again. She'll even grab the other one, now a bear in each hand, and look at them both - although I think she's only referred to the second one as "beah" once.

The other scenario is when she first sees Pita in any given situation where the cat enters her sight: She smiles and squeals what sounds like "Iddy!" Which wouldn't be that far-out-there, considering we say "kitty" every time she's gazing gleefully at the cat. But she'll only say it once at a time, instead concentrating on grinning from ear to ear as Pita grooms herself or trying to reach out a little baby hand to grab some grey fur.

Oh, and she says "mama" and "dada" too - but only if you ask her to say the opposite. For instance, I stood in front of her today, cooing "mama. Mama! Mama." And she babbled a little bit, then looked up at me and said, very delibrilately:

"Dada. Da da da..."

And she does the same to Jason. I swear she's messing with us. :-)