I had something pithy to write here, thought of it this weekend, but alas the Monday doldrums have wiped those ideas clean. I'm just going to type until I start boring myself.
As Rowan starts understanding words more and more, less and less of her actions are dictated by instinct. She now reasons, she is starting to understand actions and reactions and consequences. She's testing our limits more and more. She knows what a diaper is, when it needs attention and where to go in the house to get that attention. She knows what up and down is by her physical location and other objects location. She even gets confused by the hallway light switches. You know the kind that you can have in the "on" position but have to push down to get the light to come on because there's two. She'll grab hold of the switch and look at the light, the switch is already on, but the light isn't. She'll sit there and grunt and push with all her might, but she won't be able to get the light to come on. So while she's able to think now, she's not able to think outside the box yet. Everything is still pretty linear.
She's also starting to carry on conversations with you. The words don't mean anything, but you can tell the pattern is there. It starts with dada or mama, you say what, she'll speak in chinese/pig latin for a short burst, you say, oh really, she says "yeah," then bye bye as she closes the door on your face. It's unbearably cute and pretty fantastic from an anthropomorphic stand point. She's evovling to fit inside the only norm she knows, her parents. We're shaping how she talks, walks, and thinks. It really hit home lately that I'm the catalyst for how she ends up in life. I'm sure most people realize this to a certain extent. But I'm talking about something more esoteric, less corporial. I'm talking about paths of thought to conclusion and the lilt of a voice and mannerism of understanding. It's more than just what you say and how you discipline and what music you listen to and what shows you watch and what games you play. It's your posture and your response time and the pressure of your touch and how you hold a fork and what sounds you make when you hug (some people squeek, some grunt, some sigh, you never know.)
Yes your DNA and your partner's DNA make the child look a certain way, and in some cases act a certain way (for instance, my grandma, my dad and his brother, me and my brother and now Rowan, all scratch our arms in our sleep. Only weird because I don't know anyone else who does that.) But if you take that child and put them with a different family, what you have is someone who doesn't look like those people, but acts like those people. It's fairly obvious, but like I said, I had a great idea to write about, but it was lost somewhere.
