Baby to Toddler

Our 14 month old has been toddling around for about six weeks now, but has only been walking with assurance for less than two weeks. But, for me, the entrance into toddlerhood is less about walking than it is the way in which she interacts with others. In the last couple of weeks she has started to say ‘Hi!’ to people she passes in stores or on campus, and grins happily when people respond and make a fuss over her. The change from inert baby, sitting watching the world go by, to an active individual interacting with the environment is fascinating. Suddenly Kasia is no longer a baby but a tiny person.

But the defining moment came this weekend when I was watching Kasia in the kitchen with her older sister, and Kasia took off down the hall. I gave chase, afraid that Kasia was going for the ladder to her sister’s bunk bed (her current favorite hazard) or the stairs or etc. But turning the corner from the kitchen to the hallway, Kasia was already gone from sight. Not seeing her in the hall, I hurried to Tigana’s room to check the ladder, and called for Tigana to come help find her sister before she got into danger. I don’t like Kasia to get out of sight even for a moment, since she is a master of finding choking-size items to insert into her mouth, or sharp objects to poke herself with, or etc., even though we are constantly policing the area. As seconds stretched into a minute and more with neither of us finding her, I started to get a bit frantic, and re-searched the rooms I was just in, knowing she could not have gotten that far in just the few seconds she was out of sight. Finally, Tigana caught Kasia peeking out of the darken doorway to the bathroom, the opposite direction in which we had been looking. When Tigana ran over and turned on the light, and shouting “ah ha!”, Kasia literally fell on the floor and rolled back and forth in hysterical laughter. She had consciously tricked both of us into running right past her, and the more frantic our search, the funnier she thought it had been. Tigana and I sat down and laughed with her, relieved she was safe, but also surprised and delighted that she had tricked us! Clearly we had passed a milestone – we were no longer dealing with a reactive baby, but with a thinking, planning, individual. It’s great when your baby first smiles, then laughs – but the first practical joke suggests an entirely different level of humor – and personhood.