Ow. Lots of head issues around our house these past couple of weeks. I got myself smacked in the head good by a steel hand truck in what can only be described as a "Three Stooges" event. (It was later determined that I suffered a mild concussion, but the symptoms are slowly going away.) I have also been dealing with a couple of bad migraines thanks to the snow and ice storms that ran (galloped?) thru the metro area of late. And now, Sammy's dealing with a head cold. You know the kind: she can't really breathe, and every sneeze results in quite a lot of homemade silly string.

A couple of thoughts for February:

First, on Anna Nicole Smith: She's still dead... Move on to real news, please.

Secondly, on a more important topic... Sam.

Sam is now talking quite a bit, with an ever-growing vocabulary that includes everything from a skewed version of "Hippopotamus" to "Yeah, Baby!." The problem is that (and you parents out there will understand this all too well) trying to decipher what exactly a child means is like playing the bonus round of Pyramid, without Dick Clark showing up to tell you the answers later.

Sam says the same thing thirty-eight times, but we, as college-educated adults, are of course too stupid to understand what she wants or means by each iteration of the word "Shakes," because of course she can't want her stuffed cow handed to her each and every time...

Or can she?

Shakes!

...What you do to milk to make butter?!

Shakes!

...What happens to California?!

Shakes!

...What a lisp-y Samuel L. Jackson finds on a plane?!

It never ends. It's a game we never win, and I suspect that is what Sam enjoys the most. It's probably how toddlers break us, quite frankly. It's their method of mind control. Break us now as toddlers so that when they hit three we're much more likely to say yes to a twenty-thousand dollar vacation to Florida so they can say "Hi" to a six-foot rat.

Shakes!

...What Daddy gets at night as he tries to translate his child's language.