Baby Steps

So Annika is walking, really walking, in that she spent the vast majority of the weekend upright and seemed to use crawling as only a default mode of transportation. She took her first steps a little over a month ago, but what was most interesting to me about the process was the way the learning took such a giant leap, seemingly overnight, this Saturday, with no apparent provocation. Since those first few faltering steps, in July, almost to the day at the same point in life Lily took hers, there were days on end when she took no steps, and seemed disinterested when encouraged to do so. There were other days when she seemed to want to practice, stepped out into the abyss from the edge of the couch, chortling proudly until the inevitable thump on the floor, bottom first. And then, Saturday morning, she took a step away from the little table in the middle of the room and just kept walking. She walked to one couch, then turned and walked out into the center of the room. Suddenly she was able to crouch down and pick up an object, return to a standing position, and walk off again. She even managed a little step, dividing one room from the next.

This has happened with Lily's reading, too. For what seemed like forever, she would sound out words laboriously, even if she had sounded out the same word a sentence ago, or on the same line. I pointed this out a couple of times when she asked me how to read something: Look, I said, it's the same as this word you just sounded out. Somehow, it wasn't clicking. And I noticed recently that she doesn't do this anymore, that many of those sight words she'd been sounding out for so long are second nature to her now, but also that once she has sounded out a new word, she recognizes it when she sees it again.

How does this happen? Is it simply the passing of time? I don't think so. I think we learn so well when we are young. I think our brains are working so hard, so industriously, so profoundly, all of the time, that we aren't even aware of it, in ourselves or in those we love and watch and observe and care for: our children. And then, when a baby is suddenly a toddler, walking across a room to fetch a favorite toy, we think: How did that happen? How can she be standing? How can she know that toy? Or want it? How can she get across a room on foot when just yesterday she was a tiny mewling creature immobile on the middle of my bed? How can I not have noticed that this was all happening until now?

As an adult, I am constantly aware of how sluggish my brain is sometimes, how lazy. I have worn tracks in my patterns of thinking so deep I wonder if it would even be possible to pull myself out of them, to try to get back a little of that whirring, electrical magic whereby things seem to happen overnight, although of course, the work of a lifetime has been happening behind the scenes. Maybe this will be one of the unsung pleasures of parenthood for me: witnessing the capacity for change and being inspired by it in practical, challenging ways. I hope so.