The sheep says, "baa baa." The bee says, "bzzzz." The cat says, "hi."

Lots of the girls' books have animals in them so it seems that Eric and I are forever making animal noises. A couple weeks ago, Eric was playing with a puzzle with Michal. He had a piece that was a cat and asked her, "What does the cat say?" To which she promptly answered, "hi, hi, hi," using her very best little mewing voice. Eric and I laughed and laughed and thought it was just a fluke that she said "hi" instead of "meow." Well, it wasn't. Our daughter really thinks that cats say hi. You can point to a cat and ask what it says and she'll say, "hi." You can just ask her without the picture and she'll say, "hi" or if she sees a cat, and you don't say a thing, she'll say, "hi." Now the even funnier part is that I asked her to say "hi" to her godmother on the phone and she wouldn't say a word. So I asked her to tell her what a cat says and she said, "hi" over and over and over.

The photo above was taken when the girls and I went Christmas shopping at an outdoor mall -- why do they build outdoor malls in Chicago? -- and it was a balmy 32 degrees outside! The girls are 23 months old today. Happy birthday baby girls!