Last night I shared a special time with my 20-month-old. I sometimes wonder if he could get any more grown up than he is now. Working a puzzle on the floor before bedtime, he was concentrating hard so that his tongue stuck out. I would coach him when an especially difficult puzzle piece wouldn't fit in place to "spin it!" and when it went in we'd cheer together.
It was a marine life puzzle, and being a born and bred Floridian with a past childhood-long dream of marine biology, I felt it necessary to share with him what the different animals were and special little tidbits I could remember. He listened politely as he worked while his mommy rambled on about, "This is a blue whale-- the BIGGEST whale! It is not a fish! It breathes air like we do and gives birth to baby blue whales... " When we came across the starfish I had an idea to go retrieve my shadow box of sea shells. Gideon's attention was suddenly all mine as I opened the sliding plexiglass lid and carefully removed the aged, salty-smelling souvenirs.
"Shell." I said, holding one out to him.
"Sell." he marveled back. I gently took each one out. Many of them have special memories to me, and I enjoyed the stroll through memory lane almost as much as I would a stroll on the beach (something I haven't had in years). There was the little grey shell my pet hermit crab used to live in, and the tent cone my brother once found and gave me, and the two beautiful Junonias that were a part of my Grandmother's vast collection until her death.
Then I finally got out the large starfish. Gideon watched me explain where the eyes and mouth were located. It must have been puzzling to him, but he went along with it. And when I pointed out the dried up sea horse's bellybutton, he just stared in quiet confusion. He has known what a bellybutton is since before he could crawl. It used to be a game to "find so-and-so's bellybutton" and watch him work to get their shirt up and search for it. He still uses the same word. "Bluh-bluh." He rolls his tongue out twice to say it. He uses this same word for butterfly, and flower (and I've never understood the correlations here).
While I put the shells away daddy got Gideon ready for bed. He had been showering while Gideon and I had our home schooling moment, and he hadn't noticed our carpet looked like a shell museum. I could heard Gideon's repetitive "sell, sell, sell, sell" echoing in the bathroom and my poor husband trying to guess what on earth he was chattering about. I wonder if I have started something-- perhaps passed on my childhood passion to the next generation?
