I’m excited for Baby Bop to start talking. I’m imagining conversations that will never happen:

“Mama, I’m all done eating, please take my plate away before I dump everything on the floor.”

Because if I’m not paying attention, Baby Bop does a massive sweeping swipe with both arms and clears her tray in seconds. Food doesn’t just fall on the floor, it goes flying across the kitchen in every direction.

This is when having a dog is useful. The problem is Booker is getting old. I have to walk around to every piece of food on the floor and point it out to him. It’s not enough to make me want to clean it up myself, but close.

Baby Bop has three words: “Mama, Dada and quack quack.” Mama and Dada seem very useful. Quack quack? Makes me wonder if all I’m doing every day is making animal noises.

It’s not a random sound. I say,

“Baby Bop, what does a duck say?” And she says,

“Whack, whack.” Which is close enough and maybe even closer than quack. I’ve never heard a duck say exactly “Quack.”

I’m a big fan of making the animal sound as life-like as possible. For a pig I do an actual snort. After 6 months of snorting, I realized Baby Bop isn’t going to learn that. Or when I do my realistic rooster impression. She can’t hope to master that for years. So for all these months of animal noises, I should’ve been doing what I’ve done for the duck, and just saying “quack,” or “oink” or “cock-a-doodle-do.”

Now when I’m in the shower I start singing “Old McDonald Had a Farm.” It makes me want to shoot myself. Nothing against Old McDonald. I’m sure his farm is very nice, even if it’s a bit noisy.

It’s bad enough to sing these songs with Baby Bop. I do NOT need to sing them by myself. Then I go to sleep and dream about pigs. Cute little muddy pigs trying to eat me. It was a borderline nightmare. Old McDonald, you need to keep your animals under control.

When Baby Bop is really happy, she likes to say “tooka-tooka-tooka.” It seems to have no meaning except now Captain and I say it all the time. And without Baby Bop. Captain tells me,

“I fixed that problem at work today.”

“Awesome!”

“Then I said ‘tooka-tooka-tooka.'”

Tooka-tooka-tooka.

So Baby Bop can quack. I wish she could moo. I like cows. And if you’ve ever wondered what your face looks like when you’re making an animal noise, here’s mine “mooing.”