LuCaspeRobin + Thomas ;-)

Our kids are, as the title of this little piece of litterature suggests, small "evolutions in progress". It is wonderful to see how nature goes about to develop our "little people" according to strict rules of progress and development. And then to witness that nature not always lets children develop at the same pace and reaching the same milestones at the same place in time. Those small differences are what makes nature so wonderful, so exciting, so grand - I'm completely in awe.

Robin has just started to crawl. On Friday evening we had put him on the ground so he could play there with all his baby-toys. As usual he rolled over on his stomach, turned over on his back, and back again on his stomach. But, then all of a sudden he lunged forward, trowing his arms outside of his playcloth. With one arm under his stomach (presumably to roll over it - a little like one can do with trelogs) he stuck his other arm on the floor, much like a frog or a reptile would do with his sucker-feet. And then with a huge moan he pulled himself almost 5 cm's forward. Breakthrough!

He was so excited about this that he repeated the process at least ten times before putting his head to rest on his left arm. All happy about having crawled closer to some of his toys, he was a little disappointed to see that his toys were still at quite some distance away (yes, you guessed it, we - the parents - had relocated the toys a little further away - all part of good parenting!). So there he went again, lunge, suck, pull and crawl. Having done this a couple of times he finally reached one of his play-toys and rolled over on his back to play and rediscover it (i.e. put it in his mouth).

Talking about evolution, it is quite interesting to look at Robin and Casper. Not only are they very different in spirit, they are also very different in development. Where Casper pulled himself upright at six months, walked along furniture at seven months and walked on his own at ten months, we cannot quite get ourselves to tell Robin that he shouldn't pull Caspers hair when they are playing together. Starting to tell Casper what was right and what was wrong was possible from the age of eight months or so, but Robin just isn't quite there yet. You could say that he's more "Gaussian", conforming closer to the standard than Casper ever did (and still doesn't - he's far above it!).

What is fun is that Robin is making more and more noise, or typical baby sounds as scholars would call it. He's discovered his ability to make things he holds in his hand go bang, klang, rinkle, tinkle, and other similar sounds. Next to that he makes sounds with his mouth, spraying spit all over the place and having lots of fun in the progress. But he can also become very angry when someone takes away something he was playing with, as one kid discovered today at the kindergarden. This kid, 5 months older than Robin, was so flabbergasted by Robins display of anger when he took away his toy, that he promptly returned the play-thingy. Robin will stand his man in this world!

Posted by Sebastiaan Naafs - van Dijk | top