This from the kid who still puts cottage cheese in her hair.

Prior to Sunday afternoon, I figured Bug's understanding of shapes was pretty much limited to what she learned from the farm-themed book we read every night before bed. Basically, that meant she thought a watermelon was called an oval, and could describe with great energy how the three-sided flag at Farmer Jed's fresh produce stand looks like a " tri-anal piece a peeeeesa!"

That is, until we pulled up to her Nana's house for dinner on Sunday afternoon, and a tiny voice perked up from the back seat.

"That's an octogon," she said, clear as day and as if it was the most normal thing in all the world. It was as mundane a statement to her as asking for goldfish crackers.

After making her repeat it a couple of times, I shook my head at Paddy, trying in vain to figure out where she might have heard that word, let alone put it in a sentence.

But Paddy wasn't looking at me. With a look of total confusion on his face, he pointed past my head to the house next door. There, in direct line of sight from her car seat, was a stop-signed shaped vent under the eaves of the neighbor's roof.

"That's an octogon," she said again, pointing directly at the vent.

Chick could have busted out with an entire verse of Beowulf and I would not have been more surprised.