Today she saw a neighbor's puppy, and right now she's in her room talking to her boppies about the puppy.

Recently, she has become absolutely entranced by crayons and chalk. She walks all over Palmer park with chalk in hand and leaves her mark wherever she goes. She is also very well practiced at asking for paper, coloring on the paper, balling the paper up, throwing the paper away and asking for more paper.

Speaking of paper, she has taken a liking to cleaning. She will scream for a wipe, which she pronounces "bop," or a paper towel ("papuh tow"), and proceed systematically to wipe down everything that she can reach. She's also washing herself in the bathtub.

Last Wednesday was a special milestone. Abby sang the ABC song all the way through for the first time (so far as we know). On the downside, last Friday night, she awoke at about midnight, and screamed the ABC's at the top of her lungs for about an hour and 45 minutes. She didn't miss a beat, though, and she woke up at her customary 5:30 am the next morning.

Also last week, when I picked her up from daycare on Thursday, she said the following very clearly, "unos, dos, tres, quatro, seize, [s]iete, ocho, nueve."

Another fascination as of late is with helicopters "hetoter" and airplanes "airpane." Every morning on the way to daycare, I leave a little early, so I stop at Unity Park and watch the airplanes on the way to O'Hare fly over. Usually, we see the traffic helicopter over the interstate, and every couple of days, it flies right overhead. Abby absolutely loves it and will talk about all the way to school.

There has been some movement on the potty training front as well. A couple of weeks ago, I went to pick Abby up, and the caregivers said that she was "in the potty." Needless to say, that got my attention. Evidently, the older girls like to go the bathroom together, and they all sit on the potty together and talk. Abby has been very curious about this, so the caregivers asked her if she wanted to sit down as well. And of course, she took them up on it.

Speaking of potty-related things. If Abby catches you kneeling down, she will walk up behind you and check you for a ... let's say... dirty diaper. After making sure that you don't need a change, she gently and lovingly pats you on the head. This, evidently, is what they do at daycare. No one is safe from this treatment, she has done it to children and adults alike.

On a final note, she is in love with a spanish song, called "Los Pollitos." She knows that we can make the computer play the video, so whenever she sees the laptop open, she insistently says "pio, pio, pio" to indicate her desire to watch it. This turn of events has ended any possible hope that I have of working when she is with me.

That's it for now. I don't have a lot of time these days, so I will just be jumping on here to catalog things for the time being.

When things settle down, I will get back into more regular blogging.