For on this day Olivia, who, like her mother, may be living in the 21st century but is tempermentally better suited to a far more... impirial era, did something unprecedented. Even, perhaps, epochal. I swear after it happened the Devil himself knocked on my door in a snow-dusted parka and yelled at me to, and I quote, "knock it off." Yes, dear readers, it has actually happened. Our miniature empress-in-training actually did it. After more than two years of Making Our Wishes Known to the Servants, Olivia amazed us all.

She said, "please."

For, predictably enough, a handful of M&Ms. I wasn't quite sure I'd heard right, so after she'd scarfed that handful I shook another out and waved it at her.

Me: "Olivia, do you want some more?"

Olivia: "Uh! Uh! Emm! ... Emm!"

Me: "What do we say?"

Olivia: "Pwease?!?" (hop hop hop)

Let's just say I'm darned glad we don't have a surfeit of skilled trumpeters. If we had enough, I'm quite sure there would be angels arching across the sky, announcing imminent apocalypse.

Ah well, I'll guess we'll have to wait for the next time the Cowboys get in the Superbowl for that.