Babies and Rocks

After breakfast, my daughter frequently goes to the door, points at it, and says, “Gocks!”

By this she means she thinks we should go sit in our gravel driveway and play with the rocks.

Since she will eat the rocks if not closely watched I have spent a lot of time looking at rocks lately. I even looked up the type we have in our driveway: Goose Egg Stone. It’s billed as a “white and tan rock” but I can assure you, that’s a gross over-simplification. Today I found:

Pink—a Grandma’s bathroom kind of pink, the color of pink that goes with shells and scented soaps. There will also be an obligatory fuzzy toilet cover in this color.

Orange—not a rough sandstone orange, but a smooth orange, like somebody solidified and shrunk an orange push up ice cream into an ungeometric lump.

Crystal: Frosty white ice chips, lying out in my driveway in 80 degree weather.

And one that I decided was most definitely a chipped dinosaur’s tooth.

I feel like if I were a fantastic writer with clever insights I would segue from this into some thoughtful application about uniqueness or solidity. But here’s all I got from it: Rocks are cool. Sometimes it may be good to pretend to be interested in things a baby is interested in, partly to keep them from eating rocks, and partly because they may be onto something.

#parenting #children #babies #rocks #baby #observation