Meow, Mom!

So for the past week and a half or so, Cadence has been saying, over and over again, a word that sounded like "mom". At least, it often had all the necessary phonetic elements. Occasionally she'd drop the first or last "mmm", but it had me very confused. It was very strange, not the "mama" I'd expected to first hear from her, but as I listened, it just didn't sound... right. Something was odd about it that I couldn't put my finger on. I responded. Everytime she said "mom" I'd answer back. Sometimes she'd laugh, sometimes she'd ignore me, and sometimes she'd get excited and say it over and over again.

But, a few days ago, I was watching her play with Taz, our oldest cat (and Cady's adopted big sister). Taz meowed at her and Cadence instantly grinned big and repeated her "mom" sound, almost a perfect mimic of the pitch and feel of Taz's regular meow. Only then did I realize, Cadence was not saying "mom", she was meowing! A very good impersonation of Taz's meow, I might add. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. On a daily basis, Cadence spends all her time with me and three cats. One of us talks some very complicated gibberish, the other 3 have one sound that works as their language. Both make just as much sense to her, so naturally she'd pick up the easiest one first, lol.

She's getting so big. It just hit me that I need to call and make her 1-year check-up appointment soon. It's October already. November's her first birthday. I'm excited to do birthday shopping though. We're tight, but I was able to do some crazy online work to make a little spare change, and now have money specifically for getting her something for her birthday. Given how much she loves opening and closing things lately, James and I have our eye on a kitchen playset, and I've already decided how I'll rearrange her room to fit the thing in there with the not-yet-purchased toddler bed. She won't really care, I'm sure, but I'm excited.

She does enjoy new toys, though. Just yesterday, we were at the store to pass some time and I randomly handed her toys off of the shelf to see her reaction. Some she enjoys, others she could care less about. I handed her a talking phone, though, and she refused to give it back. When I took it away she got mad, when I tried to distract her she would give the new toy only a brief glance before going back to the phone. So... guess what we walked out of the store with? LoL. Totally shouldn't have, but she loves the thing. She's spent hours playing with it already and we barely bought it last night!