It is sometimes difficult to communicate the fun and excitement of parenting to those who don’t have kids. Especially when talking about small things. Adults take A LOT OF things for granted, and they don’t realize to what extent they do until they see a child acquering those grants, working hard for each of them on a daily basis.
Let me give you an example of the most recent Maxim’s development milestone – a pyramide. Even if you don’t have any children, you’ve probably seen them a billion times – small plastic or wooden pyramids of brightly-colored rings on a stick.
When any adult sees this thing, it is immediately obvious to him what is the purpose of the said toy. Disassembling the rings from the stick and then assembling them back onto it in the right order. TADA. That’s it.
We’ve been watching Maxim trying to figure it out for the last three or four month.
No adult probably has enough imagination to occupy himself with such a toy for three hours. What in the world can you do with it? Here are a few examples: turn the whole pyramid over and over all its axises, drop it, drop it in such a way that rings come off, pick up each ring one at a time, pick up two rings simultaneously – one in each hand, pick up rings differently based on their colors and sizes, suck those rings, bite those rings, attempt to pick up more than two rings simultaneously (possible, but needs a lot of figuring out), drop rings, throw rings (a lot of fun!), combine rings with other toys, combine empty pyramide stick with other toys, suck pyramide stick, bite pyramide stick, knock yourself on the head with pyramid stick, knock yourself on the head with each ring in each possible order and then repeat the procedure with two rings simultaneously, hide rings, hide rings forever, find rings, and so on and so on and so on.
It’s not that he couldn’t have figured out how to put rings on the pyramid stick. It’s just that there are so many ways to play with this toy that it is difficult to single out any particular one of them.
But we finally go there. Now Maxim got interested in putting the rings back on the pyramid stick. And he can even combine them in the right order. Wow!
A note for those of you who don’t have kids: pyramide is this kind of toy that stimulates child’s mental development. Apparently, it can be so hard on the kid’s brain, that often kid would avoid this toy alltogether. We know a few kids who are much older than Maxim and who haven’t yet figured out the pyramide or tried to do so and lost interest.
Last paragraph in one sentence: we are breeding a genious!
