Harper is talking up a storm. I guess this shouldn't be a surprise -- she's been talking for quite awhile now -- but just in the past month a verbal hemorrhage has begun pouring forth. In the past, words weren't surprises. Each word was work and we worked awhile for her to get them down. When something came along and it was a word she knew, she used it and everyone cheered and then we went back to communicating with crying and yelling. 
But now she can talk all the time about everything, and she does. She's constantly surprising me with words I didn't know she knew. Last week she was wandering around muttering "cheeseburger" a lot, then occasionally coming right up to me and going, "CHEESEBURGER!" So we got her a damn cheeseburger on Monday. But where the hell did she learn cheeseburger? It's not like we talk about cheeseburgers constantly around here. Well, on second thought, maybe Sean does.
But mostly, I love getting to communicate with Harper more. She likes to tell me stories. After a major event in her life, which usually means interacting with some animal, she rehashes the details with me for a couple days. A couple weeks ago, after molesting two cats who were hanging out at the neighborhood playground, she spent days telling me, "Kiss kitty, hug kitty, two kitties. Pat! Pat kitties. I LIKE kitties!" Last week, we saw a bobblehead Geico gecko, and she went nuts. She climbed up on the desk it was on and went to town on that thing. And she spent the next day telling me all about it: "Hug gecko! Pat gecko. I LIKE gecko!" She seems to know we're going to the in-laws again soon, and she's been babbling away about getting to give Heidi dog treats ("I LIKE treats!"). And, oh god, the freakin' World Series. Don't marry a guy from the Northeast if you want your kid to be normal. Harper fell in love with Manny Ramirez during the series and now likes to babble on about how she's going to give "Manny" a hug.
Yeah, there's a downside -- she asks about things I'd rather avoid, like "more cand[y]?", and can we read the book about Lollipop the dog for the 80th time today. But when that kid comes to me and says, "I LIKE Mommy," it's pretty damn great.
