G is now just beginning to show little signs of fear. Her daddy put her on his shoulders and she was so happy, but then she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and her lower lip started to tremble. She was scared! Of course we brought her down right away and reassured her, but the experience is teaching me that G is learning; learning about cause and effect, or more broadly, that information learned from one experience can be applied to another.
Sadly, some of these realizations have come with unpleasant learning moments, like when she had to get three daily consecutive shots of antibiotics and on the third day, a very happy and bubbly G who was interacting with the medical office staff begin to cry, not after the shot, but when the nurse swabbed her leg with alcohol. She had remembered yesterday’s experience; the swab was joined in her memory with the pain of the needle. Oh the little one cried herself to sleep on my chest that afternoon. But you know, the shots worked, and her 5 week long ear infection is (finally) clearing up.
Before this blog entry gets too sad, let me also mention that G is also learning about love and laughter, too. She finds people, especially little bitty people, hilarious. They’re her size but they do all kinds of crazy things, like play with toys she’s never seen before, say sounds she’s never heard before, and give big fat crazy grins right back at her. She thinks her cousins S and L are just about the funniest people she could ever imagine. And she’s now trying on different laughs; she’s got a glee shriek, a rather dry cackle, and an anticipatory giggle.
It’s such a gift, the best kind, the kind you keep receiving over and over again, to watch babies learn. Whether it’s how to roll over, how to protect oneself from falling, how to make a new sound, or one of the millions (infinite, really) connections that the vast array of developing neurons make, it is such a gift. It’s getting to learn everything again, anew, and it makes the whole world into such a better and simpler place. Watching a baby learn is falling in love with the world, all its hangups, pitfalls, missteps.
