My daughter is just a few days shy of 2 and a half and she LOVES to talk. As I understand it, I loved to talk at her age too but I rarely spoke to strangers. I had two sides (and still do, actually); I was a very shy kid around anyone who wasn't family or a close friend, which was probably a good thing because the unpredictable, talkative daredevil in me came out when I was home. Further complicating things for my mother was that I was one of those kids who would study a situation and then apply my (usually evil) knowledge to changing it. Example: When I was 6, my mom got me a Rubik's cube that had the faces of Disney characters on it, instead of colors. I twisted and turned it for about twenty minutes before realizing I could just pull off the stickers and reattach them so that they'd all be on the same side. This little incident, as well as a few others prior to it, earned me the nickname 'The Professor', which still stands to this day.
It seems as though my little girl has inherited my unpredictable nature and love of figuring things out. But she has yet to decide if she wants to use this power for good or evil, so I'm not sure how to feel about it. Another, better thing she's apparently inherited is a talent for picking up languages. We always intended to raise her as bi-lingual (English and Spanish) but what we didn't count on was her two best friends throwing two more languages into the mix. My sister's youngest son will be three in a few weeks and he and my daughter just adore each other like you wouldn't believe. He's deaf so they can't exactly talk in the traditional sense but he's somehow managed to teach her quite a bit of sign language in the last six months and they carry on in their own little world that way. Her other best friend is the little girl of one of my friends, who speaks a weird mix of French, Spanish and English. Whenever they play together they carry on in almost fluent French. That's four languages that she's currently speaking. She hasn't even been alive four years yet.
I think children are much smarter and much more aware of things than people think. They study and are very tuned in to everything the people around them do. I imagine this is why shrinks attribute everything to their patients parents, because a lot of who we are is based in how we were raised. I was raised in a very creative household and was encouraged to just be a kid and explore my world. My daughter is the product of two creative people who like to ask questions and love to learn so it's not totally unexpected that she's soaking up so much knowledge. It is a bit of a surprise that she's picking up so much so soon though. It's crazy to see so much of yourself and the people you love in this little person. I just hope her passion for learning doesn't wane as she gets older and is inevitably influenced by her peers. You know, she could be President some day ;p
