For the last few months (I started writing this on November 4) Reid has been playing with sounds and meanings. She will put a couple of sounds together and then say, “That means …” I have chalked it up to her learning French at school, though I’ve also read that 4 year olds love to make up words in general. Most recently, Reid has incorporated hand signals and body movements into her repertoire of things that mean other things. For example, she’ll say “If I do this:” and then she’ll wiggle her body a couple of times and then hold her arms straight up, “it means X. But if I do this:” and she’ll stomp her foot or whatever, “it means Y.” I don’t know if this means Reid will be a linguist but I do know that it requires that we pay good attention when she is talking and signalling.