Toddler Milestone: Recognize, Identify, and Laugh Your Head Off

One of my little girl's favorite things to do right now is to point at something and say what it is.  We adults take this entire process for granted, but what is really happening is truly amazing.  She sees an object (an amazing thing in itself) and she is able to recognize what it is.  Her little brain then tells her what the object is, and she is able to pull a word out of her brain's vocabulary file and then say that word to me.  It's not always this funny, but sometimes it just cracks me up.

When my daughter does not know the object she is seeing or sound she is hearing, she asks me, "What is that?" And this is not like a typical you're-sitting-on-the-couch-watching-a-movie-with-your-significant-other-and-some-pots-and-pans-shuffle-in-the-cabinet "what is that."  No, this is a "What is THAT?!" with the utter amazement that only a toddler could conjure up over something as trivial as a dripping faucet.  This is a great time to be a parent.  I'm the expert on all UFO's (unidentified foreign objects) and mystery sounds.

From time to time, my daughter will try to surprise me with her knowledge.  I was in our kitchen cleaning up after dinner, and my Munchkin came up behind me and said, "POOP!"  Since, we're potty training, I was very excited that she might be telling me she had to use the potty.  "Do you need to go poop on the potty?"

"NO! POOP!" she said, pointing to the window above our kitchen sink.  Now I was totally confused.  Then it hit me, the potato scrubber!  On the window ledge, we keep a brush for scrubbing potatoes.  The top is shaped like a potato or, to a two year old, poop.

The important milestone here is that she can identify poop.  This may not seem like a big deal, but it is of the utmost importance to any parent of a toddler.  The moment you don't have to worry that your child will pick up dog poop and think it's chocolate, your life as a parent gets a little bit easier.