"Speech! Speech!"

Knowing who Stella's mom is, I just knew our daughter one day was going to have the gift of the gab. That's a good thing. But I couldn't know exactly how her speech would manifest itself.

Home Girl can monologue like no one I have ever known. She can go on for 5 plus minutes, as if she is Tom Brokaw reporting the news. Most of it is nonsense (as is the case with TV pundits, too) but often she'll throw out some phrases that sound like they make perfect sense. The only thing they are missing is the original context.

At any given time she may say one of the following:

"I don't think that's a very good idea, but..."

"That man's getting a little bit old, but that's okay." (She might be talking about me.)

"Mommy's got a baby in her belly. I'm going to be a big sister. He's a boy. His name is going to be 'Big Boy.'"

And she likes to end random sentences of babble with "August-time." I like that. She knows the baby is going to be born in August. Maybe that's where she gets that term.

A couple days ago she was urging Marian to get off the couch and lead a walk to our neighbor's house to feed her cat, Roxie. Stella tried her best to pull her pregnant mom to her feet.

"Come on, Mommy! Let's go feed Roxie."

When Marian wouldn't comply, she said.

"Come on, Mommy... Help a sister out!"

Both of us died laughing. You can bet where she got THAT.

We don't get "why" yet. That's going to be a blast, when everything we say is following by "why" or "how" or "how come."

But it's fascinating to watch. I've said it before, but I'll say it again: As people to study, kids are more interesting than adults, because kids change every day. Adults -- every few years or so. And one's own kids are usually more interesting than others' children. Funny how that happens.

I recommend a kid to most anyone thinking about having one.

Just be very careful when you're teaching them to talk.