I measure my granddaughter through inches and words and, as a clearly neutral observer, have decided she is a diminutive genius. At five, she is tiny but her vocabulary seems ample. She is at times "frustrated" with her father, "disappointed" with her mother and would prefer if people did not invade her "pirate space".

She hears words and dutifully repeats them, sometimes slotting them perfectly into the right context or making a beautiful mess of pronunciation. On weekends, she informs me, she has just returned from "ginastics". Indeed.