Year 1.5

A year-and-a-half ago, Claire came into our lives, persistently working her way out of her mom's womb with an elongated skull and a little drama.

That tenacity is a halmark of her personality today. And what a robust personality it is.

Last month marked her first unsolicited thank-you, her voyage from monosylabic banter to a two-syllabal vocabulary and a clear entry into creative play. She's coming up with her own ideas, drawing her own conclusions, inventing her own version of reality out of whatever means lie at her disposal.

This photo illustrates just what I mean.



Last week, Claire requested her waterproof Elmo doll accompany her during her bath. Nothing unusual about that. Elmo has a loop at the top of his (or is Elmo a her?) head that you can use to hang Elmo up to dry. During her bath, Claire took the loop and draped it around the shower knob on the faucet at the foot of our tub so Elmo hung down in front of her. Then she started pushing Elmo back and forth in slow, deliberate strokes. "Hhwiiiing," she said. "Hhwiiing."

At first, I didn't realize what she was doing. Then it dawned on me.

Claire's favorite thing in the world right now is to swing. She could rock back and forth in the air for 15 minutes at a time, a long period for a short-attention-spanned toddler. Suddenly I realized that Claire was giving Elmo a ride on a swing. At one point, she even asked Elmo: "Hhwiiing?"

"Uh-hum," she replied.

She did this without prompting from either of us. We'd never hung Elmo on the shower knob. We'd never suggested he or any other doll swing with her. She examined at the loop, looked at the knob, calculated that she could use both to swing Elmo back and forth and then orchestrated the maneuver with her unusually dexterous fingers.

No, this isn't any different than any other child's development. But it's a stunning realization nonetheless for any newbie parent watching human evolution unfold in front of them. It makes the past 547.5 nights of interrupted sleep (I write this at 3:57 a.m.), stinky cloth diapers, far-flung foodstuff, missed movies, forgone Friday nights and sorely neglected yard and pets all worth it, her father says. I dare not speak for her mother.