Jadzia's pre-first-birthday race

As Jadzia's first birthday rapidly approaches, there's a race to see which ability will manifest itself first: walking or coherent talking.

Jadzia is getting very good an standing up unassisted in the middle of the floor, and has been doing the furniture shuffle for a while now, but still prefers crawling as her primary means of transportation.

As far as talking, her communication skills are growing rapidly. I have the definite impression that she understands 90% of what I say. She has several hand signals: waving, pointing (at nothing in particular-it's just fun to get adults to turn their heads), clapping, the signs for more (which she tends to use interchangeably with clapping, for apprieciation, as in "more Christmas tree") and the sign for milk. She nods yes, and shakes her head no (the nod being accompanied by "ya, ya, ya, ya, ya"). She says "Hi", only it sounds more like "Hieeee". Also she says something that sounds somewhat like "Doggy" to describe any animal that even vaguely resembles a dog (such as a chicken). I can't be sure, but amongst her babbling I think I heard her say "William" and some other almost words and names that I can't recall right now.

Today she kept saying "Daddy" as clear as can be. Unfortunately, since Daddy wasn't home, she used it to refer to various inanimate objects and people. That doesn't mean she didn't know what she was saying. I figure she must have meant something like "That's Aedan's Daddy, where's my Daddy?" or "This toy belongs to Daddy," or "Daddy would get a kick out of this" or "That shiny doorknob is so great, it reminds me of Daddy."

Yes, she is a near vocabulary master. Still, talking is a complicated skill, and we'll probably see steps before we see sentences.

I'm going to go ahead and post a video below that has nothing to do with walking and talking and everything to do with the hilarity of watching my almost one year old attempt to wake a dead-to-the-world sleeping almost three year old: