The other day I took my son to the children's section of our local branch of the public library; the most fascinating and delightful part of the trip for him wasn't the actual perusal of books, and it wasn't, for once, the computers; it was the discovery of some plastic-covered yellow lights near the base of a long wheelchair ramp leading to the lower-level entrance. He chortled with pleasure as he walked up to them and tapped them with his hands. At the Randall Museum yesterday, he was moderately interested in the rabbits and chickens and turtles, but what really impressed him was the sight of all those bubbles rising from the pumps in the aquarium. At the Academy of Sciences today, his big thrill was pushing around the plastic chairs in the outdoor cafeteria (though he did also stare at the fish in that huge aquarium with open-mouthed fascination). My husband reports that during our son's outdoor stroll along the Embarcadero, he really communed with garbage cans and lampposts, hitting them with the palms of his hands and shouting with excitement.
I know he's not that different from any toddler his age. Which is what makes toddlerhood a truly remarkable time. Never again will he discover things with quite this much enthusiasm and wonder. Or to put it more positively--one of my goals is to help him see the world at least partly from a toddler's perspective for the rest of his life.
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