The shriek

Today, while H was intentionally not napping when he should of been, we heard a shriek of joy from H's room. We had left H in his room a little while earlier and instead of sleeping he decided to play. We were listening to the normal playing noises when H let out one of his trademark shriek's of joy. Generally we hear 'the shriek' when he has figured out he is capable of something new (such as standing), has a what he considers to be a particularly good idea, or has discovered something absolutely fantastic.

So, today we hear the shriek and sit in the living room wondering what it is that H is shrieking about. We guess it must be a good idea. After a few minutes it has been very quiet. Normally this means H is focused on something intently. Generally such intense focus is directed at something he shouldn't be doing (such as playing with ever exciting extension cords). When we peek into his room, H is sitting on the floor happily sucking on an old bottle he found. Earlier that morning he had a bottle and instead of putting it in the kitchen I forgot it on the window sill behind the curtain. During naptime H was tooling around his room and made one of his favorite stops at the window sill to lift up the curtain and peer out. To his great surprise and joy today he found a bottle! So, the shriek we heard that we thought was due to a good idea was in fact a shriek of joy at the discovery of the bottle. You would have thought H had struck gold.

In order to allow H to enjoy his discovery we gave him a fresh bottle so that I could stop cringing as a mom watching my child suck on a dirty bottle. And we all felt very happy with the compromise.