1. Playing outside in the yard this morning, Cate walked over to my car and tried to open the driver’s seat door. I opened it for her, she climbed in and started pretending to drive. I know all kids probably do this at some point, but this was a first for us and it cracked me up. Then she saw herself in the vanity mirror, laughed and said, “It’s Catie!!” She doesn’t usually say that to the mirror (or identify herself in the third person), I guess she just wasn’t expecting the vanity mirror to be there.

2. She plays with her toy cell phone a lot, and usually she answers it with “hello?”, then she babbles for a while, and finally says, “ok, bye!” as she hangs up. That’s pretty much a dead-on impression of me on the phone. But after tonight, I’m thinking she has a career ahead of her as an impatient, bossy, high-powered CEO. Her toy cell phone rang, she flipped it open, and barked “WHAT?” into the receiver. Heck yeah, that’s my girl. For the record, I have no idea where that one came from. Yes, the robocalls over the past few weeks really did get on our nerves, but I swear that neither Dave nor I are ever that rude on the phone.

Later, she hit one of the buttons on her phone that played a pre-programmed message. It’s a recorded voice that says, “Hi there! Wanna come out to play?” Cate shrugged and said, “OK.” Totally nonchalant, just yeah, that’s cool, whatever.

3. Tonight after her bath, I brought her into Dave’s office to say goodnight. (Lest you think he’s slaving away working on Sunday night, rest assured that he wasn’t. He was watching TV.) On our way out, she waved and said, “Bye, Daddy! See you! Bah-duboo!” That last word right there is the closest we’ve gotten so far to an “I love you,” and I have to say, that was pretty awesome. I’m only a tiny bit jealous that she said it to Dave first.