Clapping

The excitement over Annie’s onrushing adulthood caused me to neglect another milestone she reached last week. On Thursday night when my wife got home from work, Annie gave her the perfect surprise…a spontaneous bout of clapping. She and I have been working on this for a couple of weeks now, but I thought it was still some time off. Unlike her kissing a boy in public, I think this is a benchmark moment that I can get behind.

What I have found so amazing about clapping, is that it's the first manifestation of a physical act that required a true line of thought. All of the other movements in her life (crawling, standing, laughing) have been a matter of instinct. However, with clapping, she had to observe, calculate, and then act. I’ve been so excited about this. All weekend we have seen her mimic our actions more and more; both cute (clicking her tongue on the roof of her mouth), and not so cute (simultaneously yelling at the top of her lungs with my wife in the back seat of the car). Thanks honey.

I love that she now has a way to express herself other than crying. Last night when she woke up five times (yech, more on that some other day, I don’t have the strength) she should have clapped instead of screamed. I would have been so much happier about losing those few hours of sleep.