Nurture

It could be that it's just a coincidence of child development, or it could be that P senses what's coming, but yesterday evening we saw a new behaviour from him. The vintage baby doll was something I bought at a car-boot sale as a child and it's ended up being a sort of ornament (although my husband would dispute its aesthetic qualities) in the majority of my adult dwellings. Around bath time last night, P found her and immediately started cuddling her, holding her in the air and cooing at her and referring to her as 'baba'. For the rest of the evening, and on and off all day today 'baba' has been carried around, cuddled, 'fed' and given 'drinks', put down the slide, nestled in cushions and bounced on the baby chair. Again, it's not a behaviour we've ever seen before in him, but it does bode well for our new arrival. That said, for all his boundless energy and fearlessness, our boy does have an incredibly delicate and gentle touch- usually reserved for carefully pushing buttons and switches, undoing fastenings etc. I saw this again today when he clambered onto a chair to examine the basil plant I'd left on the window sill (it wouldn't survive in our arctic kitchen). I encouraged him to rub the leaf and smell the scent, but having done that, and seen how the leaf ended up ragged and squashed, he was oh-so-gentle until his curiosity was satisfied.