"Yellow"

Calories be damned...

...anyone who blogs and doesn't post this link doesn't love you.

Suddenly, words

Last week we visited Fort Collins to help our friends (Todd, Jessica, Kimber and Kenna) work on their new house and visit the grandparents, Dave and Betty. They can tell you that Calliope says "no" and "mama" and signs a little bit, and that's pretty much it.

Well.

Four days ago, she suddenly decided that the time has come to talk. So there. She literally woke up one day and started repeating words and then using them. Ryan is suddenly accurately called "Daddy". (Before now anyone she wanted something from was "Mama".) She says yellow, poof (little bunny foo foo, ya know), stinky, other, purple, Eli (was being called with some energy and she decided Eli's daddy needed help calling him), and crayon. The same synapse that connected in her head also requires books. All books, read cover to cover, over and over and over and over and over again. This is a huge change for a baby that couldn't sit through three pages of The B Book. (The sum total of text on page three consists of the words "Big brown bear".)

In other news, Clementine, who has been waiting her entire life to do the climbing wall at the rec center, learned today that the weight requirement was lowered from 40 pounds to 25 pounds. (This has been the basis of eating nearly every meal for the last year, so I'm at a bit of a loss now.) She gave it a good try, and I am sure we'll have to plan time to do the climbing wall every time we go swimming now.

In Audrey news, (>gasp<), I am excited that the team I worked with at Magellan was selected for guru Jakob Nielsen's 10 Best Application UIs of 2008. We worked incredibly hard at the design of this product, and then with our (ex) engineering team to get it built, and finally slogging though non-trivial obstacles to get Magellan to accept the award. I'm tickled pink.