"Baby!"

Every time Stellina sees Barack Obama's smiling face, whether on TV or in photos, she grins, points and says, "Baby!" Is it his hairstyle, so similar to hers and that of her contemporaries? Her vocabulary thus far, at 13 months:

Baby -- herself in the mirror, other children, dolls, presidents-elect
Beebee -- small stuffed animals, birds, the dog
Mama -- started as "Mamamamama!" while reaching for me and crying, but now it's pretty clearly the two-syllable moniker
Dada -- not sure if she's connected this to the person. She's said it when she hears a noise coming from another room of the house, but not to his face.
Bye-bye -- coupled with a open-closed-fist wave. Last week she waved side-to-side, fingers splayed, but just one time.
No -- but pronounced "Nyo?"
Nana -- might or might not have been in reference to her banana. There are lots of those words so far -- ones she mimics us saying, but not repeatedly. Also "abble" (apple) and "sweebee" (Sweetpea) and "away" (when putting any object into a container that will hold said object. We practice putting things "away" a lot.)
Poop -- uttered once, very clearly, as she was doing so.

Back to babies. She has three dolls, all gifts. They all have molded plastic bald heads. One blinks, another smells like the cloying, sneeze-provoking powder I'd never let near her tiny heiney, and the third can be filled with warm water so it "feels just like a real baby!" Except real babies don't have leaky plugs in the center of their backs (one would hope) or a heart-shaped tattoo on their bottom. Baby #3 has been relegated to the bathtub for obvious reasons. I thought it was a bit ridiculous, this baby barrage. Isn't she a little young for a doll? I'd kept her toys thus far non-gender-specific (not that babydolls are necessarily for girls). But she loves them, one and all. She hugs them, carries them around by their necks, pats #3 with her washcloth, and "feeds" them with her sippy cup and the tiny bottle that came with the powdery one. That's the craziest part -- Stellina has resolutely refused a bottle from the first (second, fifteenth...) offering, but she immediately knew to hold the hard, plastic, liquid-less, vaguely bottle-shaped thing to her little one's hard, plastic, entry-less lips. It was the first thing she did after bringing the doll close to her face, sniffing it and crooning, "BAYbee!"