toddlerdom

[thanate]

Between dinner at six (which can often take up to an hour) and bedtime at eight, there's a nice hour or so to run about the floor shrieking and making a mess and appreciating the existence of both parents. Tonight we were both sitting on the living room rug and the Megatherium was tottering about (she's getting quite speedy, and catches herself *most* of the time when she stumbles) when she wandered off with the two smallest stacking cups-- her favorites-- and dropped them well out of arms reach for those of us whose job it is to restack things for her to take apart or knock over.

Grauwulf pointed to the littlest red cup and asked her to bring him the stacking cup. (This is not something I'd tried recently; I've been working on, "drop this over here" which hasn't taken off at all...) The Megatherium trotted off, not to the cup he'd asked for, but instead to the little green (more distant) stacking cup, picked it up, and brought it back to put into his hand. And then, when asked, went and got the red one to do the same.

There's totally a little person in there, who knows bits of what we're talking about and how to act on it. Which I pretty much knew, but sometimes you just have one of those moments where you see it happen and it's suddenly real.

Comments

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

How sweet! Aren't they wonderful at that age? (Actually, they're wonderful at all ages.)

[blairmacg.livejournal.com]

Those are indeed awesome moments. Coolest thing? They never stop happening. :)

[stealthmuffin.livejournal.com]

Oh, that is awesome.

Here we're mostly convinced that solid food will never catch on (you silly parents with your fads) and that Mommy turning around is the best game ever. Hey, I'll do it - I'm not proud, and I love baby giggles.

[thanate.livejournal.com]

Yeah, variants on peek-a-boo are still the best way to get laughter around here-- that can be anything from hiding behind something & popping back out to pulling on a bandanna over my head. :)

[heuchera.livejournal.com]

I love how I can see Matthew's little mind working, if I use a new phrase for an action he is interested in for example. He gets this intent, quizzical expression on his face, as he tries to figure out what these new sounds mean relative to what we're doing at the time. "Matthew, pull the plug" (in the bath) took two exposures to figure out, but now he does it when asked. I wonder how they process grammar. We can mix up nouns and some of the verbs he knows, with reasonable success, but some things only get said as phrases (e.g., "turn the page") and I wonder how that gets filed away.