Motion

David’s playpen space is formed by a set of connected plastic gates. One of his favorite activities is to cruise around the inside of the walls as fast as he can. Another is to stand up and push a wall to move the entire playpen around the living room.

This morning he moved the playpen close to the sofa, and then leaned the wall closer to the sofa. This disconnected a nearby corner of the playpen gates, so when he then pushed that wall the rest of the way to the sofa he created a doorway. He was facing the other direction, so didn’t see it happen. A few minutes later, he cruised along the wall of the playpen, transferred to the sofa, and looked a little puzzled about how that had happened.

Over the next few minutes, he looked around a bit, casually pushed the playpen corner back together, moved it back and forth to see if its new function as a doorway would continue, and then peaceably played in the living room, occasionally moving back in or out of the playpen space. A space which used to have a functional designation as separate space, and which is now primarily a conceptual designation.

Last week he climbed halfway up our stairs, looking very proud of himself. It’s not clear that a gate at the base of the stairs would slow him down for more than a couple of weeks before he figured out how to open it. Thankfully he has not yet figured out how to vault out of his crib, and he is often content to sit in the WonderBug in the kitchen, so for now we still have two safe places to put him when we need to take our eyes off of him for more than a moment.

This is David in Shangri-La back in December, when the walls were less malleable: