(no subject)
Mar. 31st, 2006 11:22 pmWarm, beautiful spring day today. On our second walk, I took Alex to the "park" - not a real park with lawns and recreational facilities, but the strips of grass and landscaping that surround the Washington Monument, a few blocks from our house. I took her out of the stroller and set her down in a patch of grass.
Her first patch of grass. She was just a tiny baby last summer, and the winter has been long. And so, as she crawled around, everything she encountered amazed her. She patted the grass, grasped it, tried to pick it up. A couple of acorn fragments held her attention for at least five minutes. She spoke beguilingly to the pigeons in an apparent attempt to encourage them to come closer. She amassed a collection of small sticks, scooching along in a sitting position so as not to have to put them down to crawl. And along the way, she kept up an extensive but completely unintelligible running commentary.
My fear had been that I would be chasing after her at top speed, preventing her from darting out into traffic. That didn't happen. Instead, we made an inch-by-inch inspection of about twenty square feet of the dullest sort of urban greenspace. And Alex's sense of wonder was so powerful that she dragged me into it as well. I really saw that patch of nondescript grass, in a way that I haven't looked at grass since... well, since I was a kid.
Her first patch of grass. She was just a tiny baby last summer, and the winter has been long. And so, as she crawled around, everything she encountered amazed her. She patted the grass, grasped it, tried to pick it up. A couple of acorn fragments held her attention for at least five minutes. She spoke beguilingly to the pigeons in an apparent attempt to encourage them to come closer. She amassed a collection of small sticks, scooching along in a sitting position so as not to have to put them down to crawl. And along the way, she kept up an extensive but completely unintelligible running commentary.
My fear had been that I would be chasing after her at top speed, preventing her from darting out into traffic. That didn't happen. Instead, we made an inch-by-inch inspection of about twenty square feet of the dullest sort of urban greenspace. And Alex's sense of wonder was so powerful that she dragged me into it as well. I really saw that patch of nondescript grass, in a way that I haven't looked at grass since... well, since I was a kid.
Early Development
Date: 2006-04-01 04:59 am (UTC)Adrian