Our son has started to walk. From one day being able to stand on his own to the next happily walking across the room with a toy in his hand – the speed of learning of a child is incredible. I wish I could mimic him as well as he is mimicking me – imagine how good my Japanese would have been by now. I say look train, train (in Swedish of course) and it did not take long before my baby was also saying tåg. The ability to speedlearn, I feel, is as much about a child’s curiosity as it is about biology. Our boy is curious about everything (except for the kitchen scale that for some reason seems to scare him), and he get so excited on our daily walks that recently he has changed his sleeping pattern and now rides around in the baby car for an our at least before letting himself go to sleep.
The other day I took him for a walk by the river. We were greeted by summer winds and the river was glittering in the sun. There were many people out walking their dogs and every time my baby saw a dog he leaned forward in the baby car shouting oh oh oh oh, waving his hands up and down in front of him. (I must remember to one day write a blog post about how dog owners take care of their dogs during their outings; it is quite different from Sweden and often involves a little hoop-net.) There is a big field of green grass by the river and when my son got tired of first walking and then crawling around on the grass, he sat up and started to look at all the trains crossing the river. Looking at trains has become a favorite past time for our son, and seeing them is almost as exciting as seeing dogs; ah eh oh oh, all while waving his hands.
Today there were new things to be curious about. When I woke up, I saw our son lying on his back, staring out the window, looking at the lorries driving by on the elevated highway outside our apartment. He was so quiet, so focused that he at first did not hear when I said good morning to him. So I let myself wake up slowly, watching the lorries together with him. When he had decided that he knew enough about the highway and the trucks, he finally gave me his big morning smile and then turned his interest to the mirror image in the balcony door and started to explore his own reflection instead.
It could not have been more beautiful.
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