A game of discovery

A while back I told you about Miss I's adjustment to daycare. We are now pros on the bus*, we have the morning farewell ironed out and the afternoon reunion sorted. Which, I might add, is the most life-affirming moment of my day. The way her little face lights up when she catches a glimpse of me is unbelievably lovely. It's fair to say, until now, my mere presence has never garnered quite that much joy in anyone. It's a perfectly timed surge of affection to push us through the journey home.

But anyway. When I collect Miss I there is plenty of information about her day. I can see when she slept, what she ate, what the main activities were, what they painted, what they made, what they read, what she played with. Her teachers tell me if she was especially happy or sleepy or hungry or grumpy. Understandably though, I don't get a transcript of her day. So I don't know exactly what she sees, hears and learns. And because she can't yet tell me, I'm a little in the dark. The upshot is she now knows things that I don't know she knows.

The other night we were reading a Peter Rabbit book when I remembered the little nursery rhyme about Peter having a fly on his nose. I hadn't sung it to her before and when I started to sing Miss I went berserk. Given my singing voice, it would be completely plausible for her reaction to be along the lines of 'Mum please would you stop making that racket'. But, amazingly enough, she loved it. So much that she didn't want me to stop. So I kept singing. She hopped up, waved her arms, danced like only uninhibited toddlers can and gestured towards her nose. I was quite amazed.

The next day I asked her teachers and they said they sing the Peter Rabbit song, complete with hand motions, all the time. And she loves it. The same morning her teacher asked her where her teeth were. Miss I immediately pointed towards her mouth and burst out laughing. I'm not entirely sure if she laughed because she knows the irony (despite being the ripe old age of 16 months she still hasn't sprouted a single tooth). More likely she thinks it's funny simply because she's learned that's where teeth belong. In any case, I was exhilarated. I started to wonder what else she knew, that I didn't know she knew. The possibilities are endless**.

We now have this game where Mr G and I ask her all sorts of questions. When she knows what we're talking about she 'answers' in some shape or form, before falling about giggling, visibly uplifted at the chance to share her newly acquired knowledge. We've since discovered she knows where her ears, eyes, nose, shoulders and knees are. She loves trying the hand motions for Incy Wincy Spider and she knows how to touch her toes, put her bib in the sink, signal for milk, put her teddy back in her cot, and lots of other tiny advancements in her plight towards fully fledged toddlerhood. She seems to enjoy showing off her knowledge almost as much as I love discovering it.

*Except some days where I make amateur errors like not having the bus ticket, a water bottle, sultanas, a toy and a dummy at the ready, at the precise moment each prop is required. This failure occasionally results in very long and painful trips, which never end soon enough and always trigger loud and relieved sighs from our fellow passengers when we disembark.

**Endless is probably inaccurate. Her knowledge is likely to end somewhere between nursery rhymes finishing and advanced mathematics starting.