I think I mentioned that Alexis watched entirely too much Signing Time during vacation. Not only did she watch it in the car throughout both seven hour drives, but she was able to fix the TV at Grandma's so that it would show her buddy Rachel. Now that we're back, I've cut her off cold turkey. There's just no reason for a 17-month old to watch hours and hours of TV.

But one side effect of all that Signing Time has become evident . . . Alexis clearly learned a whole bunch of new signs. I'm choosing to focus on her newfound vocabulary and ignore the part where she probably killed a few brain cells staring at the TV all the time.

Some of her new words became obvious earlier today when she made it all the way through her book "In the Jungle" and was able to sign every single animal. I just turned the pages and she pointed and signed what was on the page. We had lion (that one comes complete with the "Roooaar"), zebra, monkey, spider, crocodile, gorilla, butterfly, elephant, giraffe (I'm taking her word for it on giraffe and elephant, I don't actually know the signs myself), fish, tiger, rhino, snake (which, of course, comes with a "Ssssss"), bat, hippo, bird, leopard (Rachel hasn't taught us that word yet, so Alexis went for "kitty"), and frog.

She surprised the heck out of me, but I would be a lot more impressed if she would figure out that she should sign and say "potty" BEFORE she goes in her diaper. She loves the word "potty" and I would love if she would figure out how to use it.