Run, kitty, run!

Poor Crazy Kitty, our long-suffering, beleagered tabby. Not only do we largely ignore her since Munchkin's been born, we also lock her in the basement at night to keep her from meowing us all awake at 2am. And now, worst of all, the hairless cat replacement has become mobile and cat-obsessed. How cat obsessed? Well, the other morning, Pynchon and I were awakened to the sound of soft meowing. Coming from Munchkin's room and, in fact, emanating from Munchkin herself. Pulling into the driveway after daycare, Munchkin shouts out, as I have laboriously taught her, "HOME!" and then, unprompted and unschooled, points to the kitchen window level with her carseat and asks, "Cat?" because, once, when we pulled into the driveway she looked out her window and found herself face to face with PCK who was sunning herself there.

Munchkin's love for PCK is passionate: intense, and a little violent. The cat is subjected to rough pawings and much tail-pulling. Her feet are grabbed. She is chased. But the 'C' in PCK stands for 'crazy' largely because our cat lacks an instinct for self-preservation. She never evades Munchkin by more than two feet, and thus foils us in our parental attempts to avoid violence by separating the amorous baby from her much-mauled object of affection. The much-mauled object of affection simply will not take the opportunities for escape we so assiduously try to provide her with.

Now, Pynchon and I are reduced to forcibly holding back Munchkin, often in mid-lunge and apprehended by the chest, and hollering at the cat in increasingly frustrated tones, "RUN, KITTY!!! RUN!!"

Proving the law of unintended consequence, the only party to learn anything from this much-repeated practice is Munchkin, who has come to understand that the proper greeting to offer a cat upon whom you are about to pounce is, "Run! Kitty! Run!" And so that's what she shouts, as soon as she sees the cat, as soon as she is up on her feet about to give chase. The house rings with frantic feline mewlings and gleeful toddler warnings. Run, kitty, run.

We are noticing that Munchkin is absorbing language like a sponge lately. She has always really understood a lot of what we say to her. What is surprising is that it is, all of a sudden, coming back out.

In addition to the quite useful "run, kitty, run" phrase, this week Munchkin has learned: "lap" (while patting your leg), "shoe", "sleep", "nap" (while pretending to undertake said activity on the floor), Coco (her bear), "doudou", "milk", "bottle", "nipple" (in reference to her own, not the bottle's), "more" (accompanied by the sign, learned at daycare), and "please" (ditto). Her old standard, "up?", is of course still very much in use. More often than not, if you say a word and ask her to repeat it, she will. This is new.

Once more, I look at my Munchkin as though she is an alien being dropped into my house. When did my little lump of hair and hugs and hunger and grunts become a creature of language? This is one of those milestones, again, that kind of snuck up on me. When did her four or five spoken words suddenly become twenty? Suddenly become greater than my capacity to list? And, most surprising of all: the last couple of days, we're pretty sure she's calling me by name: mamammmaaaammmmaaaaamamama. Wow.