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March 31, 2007
Old Friends New Friends
There was a brief period when FM reacted with fear to new faces. Brief, like perhaps a few days or a week. Since then he has shown a great appetite for faces of all kinds. He is sometimes bothered by smells—strong perfume, cigarette smoke in your hair—but seems to be pretty happy to see anyone who is happy to see him. This eases introductions, of which there have been many. Interestingly, he seems to (and I suppose most babies do) recognize other babies and children as somehow different than the majority of new people he meets. I don’t understand how this is possible. Perhaps babies measure the size of the face they are seeing? But that works only if they can get a good measure of the distance to the face, and I don’t think they can always do that. Perhaps they use the absence of a hairline to recognize other babies? But how then do they recognize children, for example Yone, our godson, whom Felix finds particularly amusing and who has a quite clear hairline? Or is what he likes about Yone is how he makes such wildly modulated sounds, and how he runs away and then runs back again and again and again? Is it that children treat each other without the sort of exaggerated gentleness with which adults treat children?
Posted by talia at March 31, 2007 5:04 AM