Good day, Moon!

We are up to our ears around here in board-type baby books. Oh, and up to our hip-waders in partial baby books -- that used to be part of whole baby books -- and bits and pieces of various women's clothing catalogs and crystal catalogs and flower seed catalogs that have been "loved to death" by our eager first readers. If it has a picture of any sort on it, Gus and Sam are all over it. Frequently, a silence will descend and I'll go tearing from the kitchen into the living room to see if the kiddos have escaped down the hall or even (who knows!) out the front door or something -- only to find the boys sitting down quietly with books or catalogs in hand. The fact that they can't actually read yet certainly hasn't deterred them. They observe that big people read, so therefore, so do they!

We also read to them quite a bit -- several books a day. (Since each book typically takes five or ten minutes to read, it's not that big a deal.) I've noticed lately that many of these children's books feature the moon, and we have ended up talking a little bit about the moon to them. But neither D nor I had done anything like take them out into the back yard and point it out to them.

As it turns out, it's not necessary to point out the moon to Sam and Gus -- because they pointed it out to us! Yesterday I saddled up the boys with their adorable little T*rget teddy bear backpack/harnesses and took them for a walk over the acre in back of our house. We were making slow progress (listen, with one of them tugging in each direction at all times, you can bet it's slow progress!), when suddenly Sam pointed up at the sky and shouted, "Moo! Moo!"

Yup. Sam was pointing straight at the half-moon, visible in the blue afternoon sky. Gus looked up and then also pointed at the moon, chanting along with Sam, "Mmmmmmmoooooo! Mmmmmooooo!" (Gus needs a bit of a run-up to get the "m" sound out of his mouth. I need not tell you how adorable that is, though it does elongate our conversations a bit.) Then just for variety, Gus pointed at a crow winging its way past and gave a very passable, and loud, imitation of a crow's caw.

I was really kind of astounded. How on earth did they make the leap of cognition that the little stick drawing in their children's books meant that white thing up in the sky? I told D about it when he got home yesterday and he flat-out didn't believe me until he took the boys out separately and tested them. Yes, at nearly 21 months, they can indeed identify the moon on command. Kind of cool!