Yesterday, while playing on her playmat, my baby did a momentous thing. She batted at a toy (I will not even attempt to describe the toy, procured for her on Sunday. It is jangly and fuzzy and pully.).

If you are not convinced, from that paragraph, that the heavens should have opened up and Strauss's Also Spake Zarathustra from 2001 Space Odyssey should have played in the background, you clearly have never had a baby.

She has been working on this particular skill for about 8 days, and has been PISSED OFF that the world has not bent to her significant will. She knew that there was a way to move things from here to there, but she couldn't figure out what it was. Was there a button? A special word? I ASK YOU, MOTHER, HOW DO YOU GET THE VIBRATING BEE TO MOVE??? HOW?

Yesterday, with no help from her toady/mother, she figured it out. She sat on her playmat for 20 full minutes, batting at the jangly/fuzzy/pully toy- long enough for me to webcam the event with her father, who was similarly impressed, because parents get impressed at things like "batting." He also listens intently and seriously when I discuss the consistency of her spit up, and any other bodily fluids of the moment.

Two advanced degrees here, you know. Fancy schools, too.

But I digress. The batting. What I like about the batting is that I saw a person, for the first time, act upon the world intentionally. Until this time, any actions of hers were involuntary or instinct. She clearly had consciousness beyond just fixing physical needs- she could (and did!) cry when lonely or bored, for example. Now, though, she doesn't just have to react to events. She can cause them. How cool is that?

And of course, I credit the new toy with the developmental leap, so we will heretofore be buying every toy in the known universe(particularly the bright! loud! plastic! ones), in a stunning reversal of our antimaterialism bias.