Roby is at a fascinating stage of life. She’s quite capable with her crawling and climbing. She can get most places, and quite often, into a lot of trouble. She must be watched at all times. I’m disinclined to build some sort of play pen or play area for her in the same way I was disinclined to give her a pacifier. She had her thumb if she wanted it and we trusted she’d not come to depend on it, which she hasn’t. I can’t actually recall the last time she sucked her thumb...

My purpose is to keep her safe, it isn’t to cook a fancy breakfast or read articles. If the requirements of watching her are demanding because I’m unwilling to limit the scope of her universe a single inch, well, this is acceptable. 

What’s most interesting about her intrepid exploration of our house is that she isn’t playing yet, she’s investigating and with a penetrating sort of focus. She is a frontiersman in an alien land, an explorer landed first and furthest to some strange country. Nothing makes sense, everything is strange and out of size, sometimes she falls down.

She wants everything, not to possess, but to understand, to feel and taste and smell and if possible, test the limits of. She bites the corners off of books, she creases photographs, she throws cups on the ground, she sucks on leather boots. The house, her world, is a smorgasbord of the unfathomable. She doesn’t appear to make any sort of judgement of any of it, not finding things beautiful or ugly, uncomfortable or relaxing, compelling or boring. Everything, from the grit of a discarded sandpaper wheel to the slop of a yogurty-spoon and the knot of an old dinner mat are met with equal curiosity and treasure.

It’s inspiring.