It must be fall in New England, because the Red Sox are on the verge of losing the ALCS to the Yankees again. (Obligatory optimistic note: It's not really over yet. They can still take the series if they win both of the remaining games, and there are certainly a lot of people who'd love to see a Sox/Cubs world series.)

It's also the first really rainy, blustery day. The trees have started to turn, many of them an ugly mustardy yellow or muted brown. But every once in a while there's a brilliant orange or crimson tree visible from the hill near our house. Autumn is definitely arriving.

Samantha's lexicon increases faster than I can even keep track. One of the child development books we read says that at peak language acquisition time toddlers learn one new word per hour every waking hour of their day.

I think Samantha must be coming up on that point fast. Latest additions over the past few days include "read!!!!!", "read book", "daddy read please" -- can you tell she loves books? -- "sock off please" (said to her sock as she was trying unsuccessfully to pull it off her foot!), "broken" (a word she heard exactly once this morning and immediately applied to a pacifier with the end cut off), "food", "drink", "lunch", "yup!", "fishie" (we have to take her to the aquarium soon) and "peanut butter" (when she wanted some peanut butter on a graham cracker). She also now distinguishes between her crib and her bed and uses the appropriate word for each of them.

Watching children acquire language is just the most amazing thing. I thought seeing her learn to walk and climb was astounding, but it's nothing compared to this. I can't even begin to imagine what's going on in her head as she's learning all this new vocabulary.