Friday, 12 July 2013

What's that?

She's been playing the What's that? game for about 3 or 4 days now. She'll point to something and ask What's that? – sometimes it'll be something she knows, but usually she actually does want to know what it is.

I really like this game. It's fun to explain easy things. That's a chicken, and that's a duckling which is a baby duck. Sometimes it's really hard, like when she asks sequentially about two of the same thing and I try to figure out what is the difference between them that she's noticed, or do I just say That's also a xxx?

I suppose I'll get sick of it over time. Then again, I'm sure she will too. Until then I enjoy the curiosity and the sharing. It makes me both feel needed and proud that she's taking such an interest in knowing what's around her.

Today we were walking with a friend through a cemetery. All the graves were different, so the girl pointed to nearly all of them asking What's that? and we sort of took turns trying to explain what a grave is, how some are above ground, some below, some in a small building called a mausoleum, some have pots built in for people to put flowers in, how to pronounce these new long words, and so on. It was a long walk, so there was a lot of explaining.

The last time the girl and I walked through a cemetery was a fortnight ago and she didn't do What's that? yet. Instead she pointed at the first several headstones and said Locked door for each one. I found this somewhere in the realm between creepy, disturbingly profound and "what do you know that I don't?"

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