Some time during the past month, a subtle line has been crossed. Ingrid’s gone from being a baby to being a little child.

I cannot really put my finger on any one thing that’s changed – it’s her whole manner of interacting with the world around her. She just seems a lot more aware and engaged with it, and exploring it a lot more aimfully. She tries to pick things up, look at them from all directions, bang them against other things. Some things bang well, others don’t. She tries to pick up my hair, the stream of water coming from the tap, and the puddles of water on the table (which, despite great improvements in her pincer grip, has never succeeded yet). And she experiments: she’s discovered that milk comes from my breasts but not from my navel, that she can hold two wooden blocks in the same hand but not three.

There is also no doubt that she has now mastered the concept of object persistence, and understood that things continue to exist when she cannot see them. She knows that when she cannot see me, the first place to look is at my desk, and the next one is the bathroom. If the bathroom light is on and the shower curtain drawn (or maybe she goes by the sound of the shower?) she has no difficulty figuring out that I’m behind the curtain, and she will pull at it until she finds me. However I have been able hide from her by lying down on the sofa, because she doesn’t think to look for me there. I so rarely have time to lie on the sofa.

She is still a creature of chaos, and likes nothing better than to destroy order. Her favourite occupation is to pull things out of shelves, drawers, boxes and bags, to knock down ordered piles. She doesn’t stack her stacking cups – she knocks them down, or if they’re nested, takes them out. It is as if order offends her. Sometimes it looks as if she doesn’t even enjoy disordering things, just tries to get it done as quickly as she can, and as soon as she’s torn them down, she loses interest – she doesn’t even play with them until I line them up again.

But it seems like she is now discovering the opposite concept as well. She has sometimes placed wooden blocks inside the box we store them in, and today she was putting a little ball inside a cup, instead of just taking it out.

She has discovered drawers and realised that new and interesting things can be found inside them. We’re vaguely considering some sort of locking mechanism, but for now it seems enough to move some things about, and keep an eye on her in the bathroom where the drawers contain household chemicals. She never goes there on her own so I’m not worried about safety yet. She’s also discovered doors and realised that they can be pushed one way and the other.

Another popular game is the thank-you game, where Ingrid gives me something and I take great care to thank her, and then I give it back and she says thank you (Estonian: aitäh). To my ears it clearly sounds like aitäh, especially because she also says it in appropriate situations outside of our game. So her two clearest words are now mme for emme (“mummy”) and aitäh (“thank you”). The third sound I think I’ve heard her use intentionally is nänn which I believe is her word for food.

In all this playing it’s been interesting to see how strongly she prefers to use her right hand. If I hand her something, she never reaches for it with her left hand.

She continues to walk with support – along the sofa or a low table, or pushing a chair in front of me. She prefers furniture to holding on to my hands. But she won’t let go, even for a moment. When she’s holding on to a chair and tries to reach the table, and it’s just a centimetre out of reach, she won’t take that leap. She’d rather sit down, move across, and stand up again. I don’t think she knows that it is possible to stand without support.

In Stockholm we also discovered that she can climb up stairs, as long as the steps are not too high. But she obviously has no understanding of danger, or of gravity, so she would happily try to sit down halfway up the stairs when there was nothing behind her. We have no stairs at home so further practice will have to wait. She does, however, practice climbing on me.

Random fact: she hates being held fast. Toothbrushing is a one- to two-second affair, and then she starts screaming. She rarely lets me hold her hand to show her how to operate a toy, or press a button. And there is no way she would sit on my lap to look at a picture book together, although she will explore them on her own.


PS: It’s getting harder and harder to get good pictures of her, because she doesn’t stay still long enough!