That little punk!

Johanna's latest trick is talking. She's been babbling for quite some time, starting with the typical "dadadadada" thing that makes all daddies feel pretty awesome. She started being intentional about associating it with Jon about a month ago, I guess. She does the sign for "father", too, so I know it's an actual word. She knows the signs for "dog", "fish", "bye-bye" and "nurse". She says dog (gog), Dad (usually in a shriek: "DAD!"), Katie (Kay-kay), Bubba (which is what we refer to Micah as) and occasionally Grandad thrown in for fun. But I cannot get that little punk to say "Mama" for love or money. She'll look intently at my mouth while I say it, and then I usally get, "DAD!" or sometimes "Blablabla"...do you think she's trying to tell me something?
So in other news, I'm a big failure as a blogger. Mostly because anything I want to say can be said in 140 words or less on Facebook. But we've been keeping on keeping on here. We started our new year of school at the end of August, have had some fun field trips, enjoyed our holidays. We've seen a little bit of snow here in NC in December and I'm sure the kids hope to see some more soon. I've been working a little bit but business has been very slow...the restaurant economy, in any case, has not rebounded, no matter what they're saying on the news.