A Further Point

So Abbie doesn’t point. Big deal. She can do lots of other things. She can crawl. She can use her thumb and index finger to pick up small objects, like peas and dog fur, and put them in her mouth. She can cry, weep, sob, blubber, snivel, whimper, bawl, shed tears, howl, AND wail.

One learned behavior she’s very good at is throwing her hands in the air. This is a valuable skill that she can use in many situations later in life, such as at football games to signal touchdown, or at rap concerts to act “like you just don’t care.” We honed this skill through many games of “So Big,” where we (Ellie and I) ask, “how big is Abbie?” in a high pitched voice, then throw our hands in the air while exclaiming “so big” in an even higher pitched voice. At first, Abbie would simply stare blankly, but eventually she started throwing her hands up, though she may have just done it to quiet her squealing parents.

Abbie has also learned to shake her head from side to side. I haven’t found anything that triggers the action, but it seems to happen when she’s thinking very hard, like the little hamster has stopped running in its wheel and only a good shake will make it move again. I’m also not sure where she learned this behavior. One possibility is she enjoys watching mommy’s ponytail move when mommy shakes her head, so she shakes her own head to make her hair move. Another much more disturbing possibility is she learned the motion from the dog when she shakes a toy in her mouth. Abbie learned to like dog food from the dog, so why not a head shake? Maybe we should train the dog to point.