Watching Gavin is fascinating. He's seeing this world for the first time with fresh eyes. Everything is new to him. Everything is worth his time to touch and explore and learn from.
This morning I watched him with my coffee mug. Earlier, while it was filled with hot coffee, he watched me sipping from it and crawled over to me, reaching for it excitedly, only to wail in frustration when I held it up away from him. So when I saw him crawling for it again later, after it was empty, I let him have it. And I watched.
He knocked it over trying to pick it up, then grasped it by the handle and dragged it away a little and sat up with it landing in his lap, open side up. He touched it, exploring it, learning about the smooth texture, the feel of the lip of the mug, the curve of the handle, and the roundness of the mug's outside surface.
Peering inside the mug, he saw the little bit of coffee that remained in the mug that had pooled there after I set it down for the last time. He reached his tiny hand down inside the mug and tried to pick up the coffee. Several times he put his hand into the mug and pulled it out, examining his fingers. They were wet, but surprisingly he didn't put them into his mouth (probably a good thing). Instead, the coffee rubbed off onto his pajamas as he excitedly bounced his arms up and down.
After a while, the inside of the mug no longer amused him, so he picked it up by the handle and brought it to his mouth, not so much chewing on it as feeling it - yet another layer of exploration of the smoothness, the roundness, the curviness. He flipped and turned the mug this way and that, , bringing it to his mouth again and again. The mug landed in his lap and he pounded on it with his hands, then picked it up agin. And then he started trying to pound on other things with the mug, which is when Mommy stepped in and ended playtime. Gavin doesn't need to add a trip to the emergency room to his list of experiences this week.
Posted by allison at December 17, 2004 11:28 AM