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memory, imagination, anticipation
Nov. 27th, 2013 11:01 amI've written before about watching the development of Gwen's episodic memory, how sometimes two weeks after an important event out of the blue she'll say something that seems (as far as I can tell) to be a report to me of her memory of that event ("moo-cows! bus!", "Batu, jump!"). My earliest memory is from when I was 3 or 4; I was taking a bath, and suddenly my mom came in, swooped me up, wrapped me in a towel, and took me downstairs and outside. A mile away, straight across an empty field to the west, a tornado had just touched down. It was going north-south, so no danger to us, and mom wanted to show me it. I wonder about these early memories that Gwen is making and clearly has for awhile, but may at some point lose, if her future-earliest-memory is from when she's 3-4.
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I've also written before about Gwen's imaginative play with her dolls, but on this trip we had an explosion in that realm, in part, I think, because she was exposed to a bunch of new (to her) toys. Perhaps the sweetest was the little tea set that mom dug out for her to play with; it was mine when I was a kid, and mom paired it with a little cupboard which had been in my great-aunt's house years ago:
She loved playing with it at my parents, and when she discovered I'd packed it up and brought it along with to Joel's parents, she dug it out and continued playing with it, offering tea to me, Rita, Joel, her stuffed animals, refilling cups from the teapot, getting out coasters to put the cups on, and so far. She would pretend to scoop tea up from the ground to refill the teapot, and this expanded to finding "food" in all sorts of various places. We stopped at Subway for lunch on the way to the airport on Monday, and the banner below the counter had tomatoes and peppers pasted across it. She would pretend to "pick" them from the banner, and then offer them to us -- often with the new phrase she's learned, "tiny piece!" (Apparently, when she begs food from me when I'm eating, I'll offer her only a "tiny piece", and so she's turning the tables on us).
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What appears to be new is the development of the ability to anticipate: To imagine her future and be excited about it. Towards the end of the drive on Monday, she was getting tired and fussy, so we told her that we were going to the airport, where all the airplanes were, and that we'd all be get on airplanes to go home. She started chuckling this delightful little chortle, interspersed with "Gwennie airplane!", and sometimes "Mommy airplane!" and "Daddy airplane!". For the rest of the trip, we'd occasionally hear from the back an excited "Gwennie airplane! Whee!" She clearly understood what we had told her, and was looking forward to it.
--
I've also written before about Gwen's imaginative play with her dolls, but on this trip we had an explosion in that realm, in part, I think, because she was exposed to a bunch of new (to her) toys. Perhaps the sweetest was the little tea set that mom dug out for her to play with; it was mine when I was a kid, and mom paired it with a little cupboard which had been in my great-aunt's house years ago:
She loved playing with it at my parents, and when she discovered I'd packed it up and brought it along with to Joel's parents, she dug it out and continued playing with it, offering tea to me, Rita, Joel, her stuffed animals, refilling cups from the teapot, getting out coasters to put the cups on, and so far. She would pretend to scoop tea up from the ground to refill the teapot, and this expanded to finding "food" in all sorts of various places. We stopped at Subway for lunch on the way to the airport on Monday, and the banner below the counter had tomatoes and peppers pasted across it. She would pretend to "pick" them from the banner, and then offer them to us -- often with the new phrase she's learned, "tiny piece!" (Apparently, when she begs food from me when I'm eating, I'll offer her only a "tiny piece", and so she's turning the tables on us).
--
What appears to be new is the development of the ability to anticipate: To imagine her future and be excited about it. Towards the end of the drive on Monday, she was getting tired and fussy, so we told her that we were going to the airport, where all the airplanes were, and that we'd all be get on airplanes to go home. She started chuckling this delightful little chortle, interspersed with "Gwennie airplane!", and sometimes "Mommy airplane!" and "Daddy airplane!". For the rest of the trip, we'd occasionally hear from the back an excited "Gwennie airplane! Whee!" She clearly understood what we had told her, and was looking forward to it.
