Nicknames

Skipper, who's getting better at talking all the time, has pretty much mastered the names of some of Dutch's friends and can say them so clearly that even non-family can understand them. However, she still calls Dutch the same thing - "Dee-deuh"* - that she's been calling her since the time when she couldn't articulate much of anything at all. The nickname has stuck. This is how people end up 25 years old with their families still calling them Ta-Ta.

Of course, Skipper refers to herself only as "Me" (usually accompanied with a chest thump and a defiant glare), so she's got a ways to go, generally, on names. She put together her first real sentence last night - she said "Help... ME!"

*The only way this nickname resembles Dutch's actual name is in the number of syllables. How she got started with it is a mystery.