*sigh*

Being sick sucks, but at least all this time off recently has led us to new Veronica discoveries:

First, she's in love with our new clock in the kitchen, a Christmas gift from Jason to me. It's a Simpsons clock, saying "MOE'S TAVERN" with Moe, Carl and Lenny on it. She noticed it from her high chair almost immediately after we hung it up, and every time she looked at it, she said "Tock. Tocktocktocktocktock." I spoke with Debbie the babysitter and found out that the name of the clock on Blue's Clues, which they watch frequently, is Tickety-Tock. So that impressed us, needless to say, and convinced us that she's supersmart because we're her parents and that's the sort of thing we tend to think.

But wait, there's more: So last night, I had a hunch when I was feeding her and said, "Veronica! Where's the tock? Where's the tickety-tock?" And she turned her head and looked directly at the clock. To check if this was just a fluke, I waited until Jason came in the kitchen a couple minutes later and tried it again. We ended up with the same results. All in all, she showed me where the clock was about five times or so last night. Of course, she didn't do it at all today, and probably won't again for several months. But last night was occupied by a few phone calls to family members, talking about her latest breakthrough.

Which leads me to another observation about Veronica: She is the Michigan J. Frog of babies. I swear, one of these days she's going to start strutting across the floor singing "Hello my baby, hello my honey, hello my ragtime gal!" only to later look at my parents, or one of our friends, and just say "goo." Every time she does something like this, she never does it in front of anybody else. Even Debbie never hears her; every time she's said a little word in Debbie's presence while I was there, Debbie was preoccupied with one of the other kids and had no way of hearing her. If Darren and my parents hadn't heard her say "kitty" on one occasion, no one would probably believe us.

I could go on with other examples, but suffice it to say that her verbal development is really impressing us at this point. She's understanding things, she's trying to connect with the world around her. It's so wonderful to watch, and to know you're an integral part of it is just the best feeling in the world.