Where is my pumpkin?

The other day my daughter pointed to herself when asked where the pumpkin was. She’s not even fourteen months old and I hadn’t expected her to do that for another four months or so, as it seems to me that being aware of its own existence isn’t something that comes till a child is about eighteen months old. Another example of my pumpkin’s brilliance is how she picked up on plastic container and then poured non-existent liquid from it and into the container. I hadn’t thought that at her age she’d be capable of that kind of advanced make believe game. She has been copying a lot of what she sees us doing (including trying to type on the computer) but this seemed to go beyond just aping the action as she then proceeded to mix the non-existent liquid in the container she had just poured it into. Of course, her passive vocabulary is very extensive as she shows by being able to follow all kinds of instructions and being able to point to dozens of different things. And not just in one language but in two different ones, depending on whether she’s listening to Dada or Mama. I really should look into getting something to read on developmental psychology as the changes she’s going through are kaleidoscopic.

The other day I e-mailed her photo to some of my friends and wrote, “All fathers think their daughters are the most beautiful and most intelligent in the world. In this I am no different. The difference between me and the other fathers is that they are wrong.” You could say that I’m not being objective but it seems to me that the situation does not call for objectivity. Indeed, that it would be inappropriate of me to be objective under the circumstances.