Some things about Breanna what with the vocabulary explosion as of late.

1. She counts but she refuses to say “one”. She learned counting partly from us (especially Hayley who loves to count things in English, French, and Spanish) and partly from Caillou (it pains me to admit that, frickin’ Caillou). No matter what we try to do though, she won’t say “one” because she leaps straight to “two, free, foe, five, nine”. Attempts go like this:

Sherry: One.
Breanna: Two!
Sherry: No, no, say one!
Breanna: Two!
Sherry: Say hi.
Breanna: Hi.
Sherry: Say bye.
Breanna: BYE BYE!
Sherry: Say one.
Breanna: Two!

2. She loves looking at a book we have with farm animals. She knows most of them, except for the sheep that she keeps mistaking for fluffy cats. But she knows her chich-en, her dog, her cow, her pig, and so on. She knows horses too, except her pronunciation is a bit off. I don’t want to take her to any farms lest she offend women standing in the near vicinity.

Sherry: Look Breanna! A horse!
Breanna: Whore! Whore! Whore!

Errr. Like one of my friends said, it might be interesting and ill-advised to take her on a horse and carriage ride through some of the less desirable, short-skirt areas of Montreal.

3. One of my favorite things to do is to sit down next to Breanna and pretend to cry. She knows it’s not real, she knows that I’m just playing, but no matter what she’s doing, she will stop and immediately stroke my arm and say, “Don’t cry!” Then when I smile and say “Okay, I won’t” she takes her turn and lets loose with some very dramatic Emmy-worthy fake crying so I can do the same to her. “Don’t cry, Breanna!” “Otay!”

4. The other night, I got into bed and as I was dozing off, she rolled over in her sleep and shouted, “Cookie! Cookie!” Then she went back to sleep. She’s dreaming of cookies, I think she needs an intervention.

5. If she does something funny and you laugh at her, she’ll look at you with a smile and ask, “What? WHAT?!”

6. She misses Hayley when she’s gone to school. As soon as Hayley’s gone, Breanna will ask me, “Where Aylay?” even though she knows exactly where she is. Throughout the day, if you ask her where Hayley is she’ll spread her arms out and say, “Aylay gone. Gone. School.” Then yesterday I was wishing that I had taken my camera out of my purse to take some video because I had set Breanna down in the school yard while we waited for Hayley to come out and when Breanna spotted her big sister coming our way, she started running as fast as her little legs could go, arms wide open, screaming, “Aylay! Aylay! Aylay!” It was ridiculously cute.

Once upon a time she wasn’t talking much at all. Now she’s working hard at trying to keep up with her big sister. There is no such thing as quiet in this apartment unless they’re sleeping. Sometimes I want to weep at the constant chatter the two of them provide. But mostly? I love it.