Why "Talking Handses?"

Erika has an endearing habit of pretending that her hand is talking. Of course, that's not really what she means: she does not yet have nearly enough capacity for figurative thinking to imagine that a hand may be talking. But that's what it looks like. She puts her hand over her mouth palm facing outward, and opens and closes her fingers, like in the header picture. Here is a link to a 7-second MPEG video of her doing that.

Handsssesss, my preciousssss.