On the cusp

Now that Quinn is walking most of the time, it's easier to notice the other little steps he's about to take, mental and physical leaps. He loves to sit with books, whether on his own with a pile, or sitting in a lap and listening to us read to him. He definitely has his favorites, and for the books that he's seen 30 or 40 times, you can see a bright look of recognition in his eyes. We have a book called, "Where's Mommy," where you lift the flaps on each page until baby finally finds his mommy. The first few pages are finding a ball, finding a wagon, finding a teddy bear. The other day I was reading this book with him, and on the page before we got to the hidden ducks, he started saying, "quack, quack, quack." He's also getting the idea of playing with not just trucks and cars, but other kinds of more animated objects. He has a couple of plastic dinosaurs, and when he picks them up, he growls, "roar! roar!". Last night he had two dinosaurs, and put them next to each other, and made one roar, then the other. He almost, almost, put one in each hand and had them roar at each other -- that's the next step, and it seems to be coming soon. This morning he found a baby doll sittinq in a high chair, and he took it out, then put it back when I said, "feed the baby, quinn, it's lunch time." He looked at me for a minute, started smacking his lips, and I thought, he's going to feed the baby! He's a genius! Instead, he tipped the baby toward him and tried to eat the baby's head. Okay, so we're not quite there yet. But still . . . .