Play

Sometimes I save pictures that are blurry or dark because they capture such a perfect moment. This is one of Miles's favorite places to play: under the dining room table and around and through the chairs. A good place for peekaboo.

He never has shown more than a passing interest in his toys. Even when he couldn't move and explore, he would rather be moving and exploring (we used to hold him up and "walk" him around like a puppet). Sometimes he will pause and suddenly be really into a toy for a little while, like yesterday he was absorbed in playing with a 12 inch Wolverine action figure for a good while (age inappropriate of course - that's the best sort of toy), but more often he would rather get into anything and everything he can find. Electrical cords and outlets, phone jacks, door stoppers, any little sort of screw or bit of hardware anywhere.

At his cousins' house recently they offered him a few different things to play with from their old collections of toys. Between a bin of plastic animals, a bin of matchbox cars, and a bin of Thomas trains, he showed a brief interest in the cars, but was mostly excited by the bins themselves.

Yesterday we went to our local Children's Museum. I was assuming that there would be little there for a baby Miles's age but we were going with his preschool-aged cousin. It turned out that Miles had a total blast. They did have a baby room, where he enjoyed standing up at a table, shaking a maraca, and watching the bubble tubes. But he had fun in the rest of the museum too - punching buttons that played music, chasing balls around the floor, and then of course he was most fascinated by the parts that weren't supposed to be played with - small whirring fans at floor level (really, they should have thought that one through - tiny fingers, people!), bolts and tubes and pretty much anything small and made of metal.

It's interesting for me having a baby boy, because I've always been inclined to dismiss gender stereotypes, but it seems apparent already that he is very intrigued by mechanical things, machines, nuts & bolts, etc. Some of this may just be the button/nipple phenomenon... have you heard that one? I've read that babies are always intrigued by button-like objects because they're like nipples. Who knows. But he also likes doors, tables, anything he can climb, even our wide baseboards for some reason - he'll stop and bang on them and holler happily. I can see why parents are always speculating about what interests their babies will have as adults - music? construction? because they show these very specific, idiosyncratic fascinations at such an early age that you can't help but wonder if there's something to it.