Setting: Dining Room. Charlotte is in her highchair, eating a graham cracker. I am sitting at the table next to her.

Charlotte: Mama! Mama. Mama! Mama. Mama? Mama?

Me: Yes, baby. What is it?

Charlotte: Cahcuh (cracker).

Me: Yeah, a cracker! You're eating a cracker.

[Pause]

Charlotte: Mama! Mama. Mama! Mama. Mama! Mama. Mama?

Me: What is it, honey?

Charlotte: Mama! Moh cahcuh?

Me: You want more? Okay, just a sec.

I get her another graham cracker from the package. There is a short pause.

Charlotte: Mama! Mama! Mama!

Me: Yes, honey?

Charlotte: CAHCUH! (She hurls the cracker to the ground.) MOH! Moh, mama!

Me: I don't think so. Your mama's not that dumb.

End scene.

Right now, she's busy transporting her shoes from one room to another. Sometimes she takes them one at a time. The next trip they'll travel as a pair. She's narrating the whole thing in baby gibberish like she's the host of her own show, some HGTV do-it-yourself thing about shoe moving.

She's spent the whole day searching for Jeff, who is out of town doing this. Every room we go into, she'll look around, saying "Dada? Dada?" Having exhausted all the other options, she opened the cabinet under the bathroom sink a little while ago, stuck her head in, and said "dada?"