K and A, that is. I just love watch­ing them as they expe­ri­ence some­thing new for the first time or as they learn to do some­thing. Lately, A has been prac­tic­ing stand­ing up with­out hold­ing on to any­thing. He will crawl up to me, Jason, or a piece of fur­ni­ture (yes, I just com­pared myself and my hus­band to fur­ni­ture!), stand there for a moment, and then let go. When he does, he gets a huge grin on his face and plops down on his butt. He is so proud of him­self for doing that on his own. It’s so amaz­ing to watch him. K has been exper­i­ment­ing with lan­guage and words lately. He has started singing along with us when we sing a few of his favorite songs. He is also using new words on a daily basis. Recently, he has started using “both” and “either.”

I have a friend, who I respect a lot, that said some­thing once that really got me think­ing. She said that she had read some­where that every time you do some­thing for a child, you take away his oppor­tu­nity to learn it for him­self. Now, there are some­thing I obvi­ously want to be a part of my child learn­ing, but other things I want to stand back and let him dis­cover the world on his own. The other thing that she had said that got me think­ing was so often we as adults tell kids how to play with par­tic­u­lar toys. Some­times, we tend to get too caught up in the right way to play with some­thing that we for­get about let­ting the child decide what is the right way to play. For exam­ple, we have this lit­tle duck key chain that Jason’s friend, Harry, gave us. K played with it for a while, and then he got bored with it. That was until he found a new use for it. The duck isn’t just a duck. It has a lit­tle but­ton on the side, and when you push it, a light turns on and it quacks. Well, of course, in the mind of a 2 year old, the duck became a cam­era! As some­one who likes rules and likes to do things the “right” way, I never would have thought to tell him it could be used as a cam­era. He fig­ured that out on his own, and he loves tak­ing our pic­tures with his duck cam­era. Maybe he takes after his aunts who are photographers.