The Persistent Thinker

Lately, I’ve noticed Reilly undergoing a significant cognitive change. To simplify: I can see her thinking.

Reilly has these three stuffed kittens that she loves to play with. There is a yellow one, a red one, and a blue one. The yellow and red ones rattle, and the blue one squeaks. I hang these toys from their Velcro snaps on the back of my computer chair. When Reilly sees her toys hanging there, she crawls over and immediately takes down the yellow kitten, which is her favorite. Then, she takes down the red, which is her second favorite.

At this point, she realized she is in a quandary. She looks at the blue kitten, then looks down to see that her hands are full already. After some deliberation, she puts the red kitten down so that she can have a hand free for the blue one. If I am nearby, I’ll say, “Can daddy have it?” and 9 times out of 10, she’ll give me the red kitten to hold while she is taking down the blue one.

Another example happened just a few hours ago, when we were giving Reilly a bath. At the end of the bath, Shawn called me in to look at Reilly. Shawn had spiked her hair into a chaotic whirlwind. I immediately broke out into laughter, and Shawn laughed too, while Reilly looked back and forth at each of us, trying to determine what was so funny. I could practically hear her wheels turning.

Reilly typically uses her newfound brainpower for evil, of course. Yesterday afternoon, I was packing up a box of books, and she watched me the whole way, hatching her plan to reverse my hard work. When I finished the box, I sat back on the couch to watch some of the World Cup, and as soon as my ass hit the seat, she was on a B-line for the box. She had removed two books before I got to her. I put the books back, explained that she was messing up daddy’s neat packing job, and set her by her stool as an alternative.

She feigned interest in her stool until I was back on the couch, then peered up at me.

I said, “Don’t you dare!” to her, but she was already smiling that devilish grin of hers.

She swung around and zipped over to the box to continue her job where she left off. This time, I put her on the other side of the room and tied her tights together before returning to the couch. That’ll fix her, I thought.



But she is persistent in her thinking.