Where can I find a white baby wig and star-spangled pants?

It seems like Suttie has a new trick every day. Some of them are cuter than others. Clicking his tongue was cool; feeding the dog food off his tray was less cool. The most recent addition to his resume is pointing. But not just simple, exploratory pointing; it’s pointing in a way that makes the person on the other end of the finger feel about 8 inches tall. It’s demand pointing, and, man, is it effective.

At his last checkup in March, Dr. Stewart asked if he was pointing yet. As I stood there blank-faced, trying to remember what exactly he did and did not do, Suttie started to reach his hand toward the doctor, who immediately said, “Yes, that right there…that’s pointing.” I didn’t have the heart to tell him that my klepto-kid was just trying to snag his stethoscope, so I kept my mouth shut as he marked down “pointing” on his developmental progress sheet.

But a couple of weeks ago, Suttie started to point – real, honest-to-God, finger-extended pointing…and now it’s all he does. He sees the dog; he points at him. He watches TV; he points at it. He hears a plane; he points at the sky and says “booo” (your guess is as good as mine). This has become such an everyday thing that he’s starting to remind me of a tiny Uncle Sam recruiting for WWII soldiers. He even wears the same scowl and furrowed brow as that stern icon and points as if he’s saying, “I WANT YOU…to give me a cookie” or “I WANT YOU…to change my diaper; it’s rank.”

So, while my child does a daily impression of the evil monkey from Family Guy, I have to just sit back and laugh because, between you and me, that kid gets cooler by the minute.