Leilanai’s never been very curious about things, but I think that’s normal for a baby still so young. So it’s also normal now that she’s moving by herself (still belly crawling) for her to start exploring things she can reach. But I sure didn’t expect her to go so quickly.
Today, she found the cats’ water bowl and reached for it. Oddly, she had been sitting not far from it for several minutes without showing any interest, and then one second when I wasn’t watching, she lunged and tipped it over, spilling some of the water. Lessons learned: always watch the baby (but how can we?), and get a new water bowl that doesn’t tip.
Barely 5 minutes later, she reached a kitchen cabinet for the first time, and seeing the door slightly ajar, pulled to open it. She has sat in the kitchen and watched us open cabinets dozens of times, so that’s no surprise. And we were well prepared for this moment, all bottom cabinets have safety catches that I installed 2 months ago. Unfortunately the plastic latch didn’t work, and Leilani got the cabinet all the way open—she really enjoyed that. There’s nothing dangerous in the food pantry, but we just don’t want her to get into the habit of getting into things (yes, we’re planning on giving her one cabinet for her to play in but we haven’t gotten around to it yet …)
So I had to stand there and hold the cabinet door closed. She kept trying 5 or 6 times to pull on it again, got slightly frustrated because her new skill didn’t work anymore, and I felt bad depriving her of the fun. She lost interest, but about a minute later, she crawled to the other edge of the door and tried pulling on that edge. It didn’t open because that was the hinge-side, but she demonstrated a certain amount of reasoning I hadn’t seen before.
And speaking of reasoning, Mommy taught her how to get down from the bed. Several times she has scooted to the edge of the bed and rolled off. We always watch and catch her just over the edge, so she has that feeling of being in danger without hurting herself. Mommy started putting her back on the bed with her feet over the edge, so she slides down and lands on her feet. She can now do this by herself, going from playing on the bed to standing on the floor. Later today, she was crawling across the hard dining room to the sill of the patio door. There is no step there, just a slightly raised sill, but she turned herself around and backed out the door!