And now it's 21...

This little Miss M is a chatterbox.

Her babbles and coos are nonstop.

At her lastest check-up, the doctor asked if she knew and used at least 10 words. I said that sounded about right.

But yesterday, I began counting how many words she actually knows and uses correctly. I was astounded as I tallied up at least twenty "things" my baby can say.

Her repertoire includes some basic stuff like:

Uh-oh, Mama, Dada, Up, Walker (the dog always gets top billing in a baby's first words!), thank you and bye-bye.

She also knows:
Duck, Paci (which sounds more like "sissy"), purple, cat, dog, and Minnie Mouse (MinMow), to name a few.

And with the amount of praise she gets each time she masters a new word, we shouldn't have been surprised at the pride on her face when she attempted today's new word.

It was lunchtime, and I asked her to pick up a piece of food she'd just spilled on the floor.

She paused, looked around at the whole family, and said as clear as day:

"NO!"

Stifling giggles as we watched Drew's mouth hit the floor, her daddy and I tried to correct her gently.

"Megan...we don't say that to Mommy!" I began.

"NO!" she stated emphatically, excited by all the attention.

"No Ma'am!", we scolded, outdoing her in force and stern looks.

The giggles had to be subdued once again when she "hid" from our frowns by squatting under the coffee table til the trouble blew over.

Tomorrow, I think we'll work on words # 22 and #23:

"Yes" & "Ma'am".

Which works out find since I'm still working on those with my nearly-six year old.