Talking a Blue Streak

At about 9 1/2 months, Ruby began saying "cat" all the time. At first it meant "non-human animal" and could also be applied to inanimate objects. She would wake up at 5 AM, sit bolt upright and declaim: "Cat. Cat. Cat. Cat. Cat-cat." This last we came to understand meant "That's the cat," which mama has been saying to her since birth. We have four of them, so there were evidently plenty of occasions for drumming home this lesson. Now the word seems to have become specified and Ruby has moved on, trying to suss out the difference between "cat" and "hat" and experimenting with the referent of "mama" (can mean "dad," "breasts," "I'm tired," and of course "Mama") and saying a lot of "Dae-woo" and "ba-be-buh" and suchlike. She also has the signs for "nurse" and "more," both of which mean a range of things having to do with food and desire. As her vocabulary gets more specific, so do her desires: not just any food, but a cracker; not just any book, but "Wheels on the Bus." She has begun bossing us around for real.