Identifications

I teach college kids. Three years ago, even though I babysat throughout my youth, I don’t think I really knew *that* much about young children, much less how they make connections and their minds work. Every week, I continue to wonder at the connections Stella makes, her ability to remember things, and (after not speaking for so long) her articulation about the world around her. I’m not saying my child is brilliant. I’m sure she is just doing the things that’s she’s supposed to at this age, I just don’t always know what those are, so I’m continually amazed.

One thing I have been wondering about it is the insistence on animal recognition. I’m totally guilty of this. I guess it’s because so many children’s books have animals as the main characters, but seriously, does Stella really need to know what a rhino is? Chances are, she’ll be lucky if she even ever sees one of these things in a zoo. (Oh how we miss the awesome zoo, San Diego). Of course, I continue to ask when we see pictures, when she gets her monthly “Wild Animal Baby” magazine her grandparents graciously send her, etc. Then again, her little brain is such a sponge right now, why not? So I’ve also started on making sure that she learns the names of the things around her. Luckily, the barnyard animals actually do live in our neighborhood, so the fact that she now knows the difference between a “hen” and a “rooster” and a “coop” and a “sty” seems appropriate. She knows that Shasta and Cortez have hooves, muzzles, and manes, and that pigs and goats have hooves too, but not dogs. Dogs have paws, Mama. She can recognize by sight and sound the woodpeckers that nest in the palm trees, the hummingbirds that go to the feeder, the mourning doves that perch on our telephone wires, and the blue jay that likes to throw all the bird seed out of the feeder. The crows, the rooster, the ducks, the goose, and the turkey are old hat to her now, and when I casually ask “what was that?” she looks at me like, really? Come on, I know that’s the darn turkey. She asks now so I have started specifically identifying flowers and plants on our walks by name, so we’ve added gum tree, agave cactus and birds of paradise to our roster as well. Sadly, if we move anywhere else in the US, none of these things are going to be as commonplace again. The crux of living in Southern California. The weather and surroundings are beautiful; the people, not so much.

I list all of this not as showing off, but more as a reminder to us of all the experiences that she has had here in our little neighborhood that sadly, she will not remember hardly at all, and even more sad, my brain will probably fail me and I will not remember either! And yet for all that she does do to stupefy Steve and I, her occasional tantrums, screaming matches, and throwing herself on the floor and crying remind us that yes, she is indeed not yet 3. There are times when I forget, when I’m in the middle of having a perfectly normal conversation with her, and believing that she is more mature than her years, and then she has no concept that I can’t read a book to her while I drive from the playground , and then all hell breaks loose and I try as hard as I can to focus on the road while she screams from her carseat.