Parts Is Parts

No matter how many small people we bring into our lives, it is always a wonder to watch them discover their own voice and identity. We get excited over each new accomplishment and anxiously anticipate the next milestone. Sometimes, though, we get so caught up in what will happen next that we forget to fully experience the amazement of what they’ve accomplished so far. And amazing it is. As a communication person, I can’t spend too much time thinking about the massive leap small people take from not knowing any language, at all, even one word, to speaking words and possibly phrases in just one short year, or I’ll go cross-eyed like when I ponder time travel in movies. The amount of work, processing, and just plain growing a small person’s brain goes through is so mammoth that it will never happen again in all their lives--just this small window and that’s it. And sometimes what they know surprises us. When Keilana was a toddler, she showed me where her nose was without prompting from me. So, I decided to see what else she knew and proceeded to ask her every basic body part I could think of and she got them all--even the hard ones like “chin” and “elbow.” I didn’t even know she knew all those. She gathered that information all on her own like a little sponge. In Sandra Boynton’s Horns To Toes And In Between, the little monsters learn new stuff. Their brains are growing, too.

http://www.amazon.com/Horns-Toes-Between-Sandra-Boynton/dp/0671493191

http://www.sandraboynton.com/sboynton/index.html