At around 8 months, our daughter underwent a new kind of development, and it happened when we least expected it to. Over the past few days, she had started to crawl around the home, touching everything, pulling on wires, trying to grab our Apple TV but then dropping it to the floor. While we half enjoyed this development, we thought that we would soon need to arrange “stuff” around our home so that it is out of her reach and she does not accidentally drop anything. But we didn’t anticipate that dropping stuff was only the first step in her real motives.
Back home from work one evening as I entered our apartment, I was stunned to find our living room in a mess with all the stuff stored under Nitara’s changing table scattered all over the place. Her toys box was lying on one side while the toys were spread all over the room.
“What the hell happened here?” I wondered aloud.
It turns out that just a short while back, my wife had left Nitara on her playmat just like every other day, and gone into the kitchen just for a couple of minutes, and upon returning, she found the whole room to be a mess with our little (little?) Nitara standing holding one leg of the changing table for support while all of its contents were lying strewn around. She did not feel she had the energy to clean up right away, so she left the room as it was.
Before I began cleaning up the stuff, I took a while to take in the scene.
“How did the washcloth pack get there? How could she even lift it? Maybe it just fell out of her tiny hands onto the floor and bounced that far away.”
“Why was her brush under the couch and how did her pack of plasters get halfway across the living room?”
Of course, I wasn’t angry. I was delighted that my baby girl had progressed further on her journey of discovering the world she had come into eight months back. She was doing what her curiosity what driving her to do.
I looked at my girl and tried to imagine what she must feel like. She still had no concept of language. She doesn’t say anything and probably doesn’t even know what she is feeling. She just looks innocently back at me and passes her cutest smiles. I smile back at her and picked her up in my arms and give her the kisses on her cheeks that I always do. It occurs to me that making a mess of things was something kids would do all their lives, while I, as a dad, have to take care of the situations every time. It was an important lesson and a reminder that I am a parent – a Dad.
Pee Poop Burp 