erratum

Dean pointed out that Sage must know a good deal more than just 50-plus words. So I did a very disorganized rundown in my head and realized that yes, he's absolutely right. Her vocabulary is actually somewhere in the vicinity of 200 words, which means that (a) I have done my wondrous child a terrible disservice, and (b) Mommy is even worse at tasks mathematical then previously suspected... which takes some doing, lemme tellya...

Sorry, sweetie!

Sage's milestones
When Sage was three months old, I thought that she was already a certified genius because she said the word "Mama", a feat that infants aren't expected to accomplish until they're eight to twelve months old. I was all set to announce the arrival of the next wunderkind to all the world, but it was 11-something at night at the time, so I decided it could wait till morning. Come daylight, she looked at her father and cooed, "mamamamamamama"; and I realized that she was, in fact, simply babbling a random syllable-- still pretty impressive at her age, but perhaps not quite reason to alert the international media.

She did start speaking pretty early, though. Although she only began talking in meaningful sentences several months ago, her first actual word popped up when she was only seven months old. And it wasn't 'Mama' or 'Dada'; here's how it happened. Her grandmother and I were watching a movie on TV while rocking Sage back and forth in her stroller. In the movie, someone suddenly fired a machine-gun, and the sudden noise made Sagey start out of her drowsiness and start crying. So Grandma and I soothed her: "It's okay, Sage, it's only the movie, it's okay." Suddenly, Sagey stopped crying, looked at us with a beautiful smile, and said, "Ah-kee!"

So there. She is a genius.