Names are fun. They're also a strange concept, as Ruby is mirroring back to us so smartly these days. Although we're not quite smart enough all the time to get her logic.

David and I have an array of names. Some days she calls us by our first names. Some days it's papa and mama. Although she'll also call me mom or mommy. When she's really upset she'll sometimes call David mommy. Today she decided consistently, without a fault, to call us papa David and mama Marsha, every single time. It was excessive and therefore excessively funny.

She knows what her own name is, and will, often with a whisper, and always after a definite pause, respond to the question "what is your name?" If she doesn't respond, and one of us does for her, she'll often protest and say "no, Ruby's my girlfriend!" or "no, Ruby's my girl!" We haven't that one out yet.

She also has yet to straighten out when to call a boy "he" and a girl "she." Everyone is always she. I love that logic. And while we're on the subject of logic, if an object is "yours" then why wouldn't her own object be "mines"?

But, and this is what prompted this posting, David got the very special treatment, for the first time ever. She has realized, for a while now, that people also have special names. I call her "pupuce" and "babe" a lot. For a while she was referring to herself in the 3rd person by using those names. David will call her sweetie or darling. So, today she called David her "papa David sweetie."