Highs and lows, man. Highs and lows. Lil Miss Austin is to the point where you can almost understand her, even if you don't live with her. Words like "dangerous" are starting to be clear now. She's also decided to start using inclusives like "we" and "us." It's something of a gradual step, because while I still think it's parrot like repetativeness that leads her to these vocal improvements slash cognitive leaps slash quasi adult communication skills, it's starting to become more and more her own thoughts and actions rather than just repeating what she's heard. I came to a realization recently that she's already reading letters, and soon she'll be putting words and sounds together, not even realizing what a huge step that is. She'll be reading cat, not exactly knowing that she's reading a word that she's already known for years. It almost seems backwards to the adult mind, doesn't it? I'm going talk about something I don't know anything about, and then go learn all about it. Well, I guess if you work in marketing that's how it's run.

So we think it's a big deal. She now wants to do things together, or follow us, or "we can do it". It's no longer about her. The I has been replaced with TEAM. It makes it seem like she's finally figuring out that even though she's a left handed shot, she's still better off on right wing; now part of the family, inclusive.

I'm guessing now that because she's been having all these great mental accomplishments, her brain is working overtime. Which would explain why she's NOT SLEEPING! Holy Pot of Coffee Batman, this kid hates going to bed and hates getting up. While she's getting some verbal skills, she still has a long way to go for temporal reasoning. "If you go to bed when we tell you, you won't be crabby the next morning." Yeah, good luck with that until she's 28 and can truly appreciate a good nap. She doesn't sleep at school or at home. She only naps on long car rides and the last couple weeks has been like a horror movie each morning. She cries herself to sleep and cries as soon as her eyes open. It makes for fun car rides to school.

I can't really fault her, I've got shoes that are older than her, so it's not like she's got any idea what's going on. But man I feel bad about her not getting sleep. She has to be at school at 7:30 so I can get to work on time, and then she's there till 5:30 so I can stay at work till 5. Then it's a flury of activity in the evening right before she's shoveled into bed, story, bath, dinner or not. Ugh, poor kid. I'm seriously hoping my company adopts a more European work week so I can knock down some of my hours. Of course, we could always wait for Mrs. Austin to gain financial independence allowing me to quit, draw at home and have LMA in school only partial days until she's 5 or so.

Of course, if it turns out she's a genius, she can stay up as long as she wants. Right?