Out it was.

I love the way my daughters talk. I love the way they pick up vocabulary, and the way they're always asking me what words mean, and I love hearing them deploy words as they go about their lives. They're both very  verbal kids, interested in narrative, eager to accumulate and use new words, and they both talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk. One of Skipper's current favorite activities is sitting down with a picture book, preferably a newly-acquired library book she's never had read to her, and "reading" a completely invented story about the pictures. As she makes up the story, she falls back on classic oral storytelling techniques like repetition - "The sun is rising. It rises to rise! It glows to glow." - and it's pretty hilarious to listen to her. (From the next room; she doesn't like to have an audience for this activity.) They use good words with each other, too. Duchess suggested the other day that Skipper should "shed one of the blankets" she was wearing in their pretend narrative game (orphans escaping an evil orphanage, as usual), and Skipper referred casually to a "makeshift" set-up for a game. Skipper recently called me her "scornful mama!" and then, to my relief, asked me what "scornful" means.

My favorite recent language moment with the girls, though, happened about a month ago, when Duchess unexpectedly lost a tooth. (Molars, apparently, don't do the prolonged wiggling-around thing that front teeth do.) Her note to the Tooth Fairy described how she didn't know her tooth was loose, and "I was eating dinner, and kapooie, out it was!"