Better than reality TV...

I love spending time with Baby Alec, my friend's almost 5-month old son. Besides the fact that he is cuter than any other man of my acquaintance and listens to me with rapt attention, there is the added bonus that he displays remarkably good manners at the dinner table. Would that I could say the same for any of my most recent dates.

I love to watch Alec try new things. For example, he has just started eating his first semi-solid food, rice cereal. I think it smells horrible, but then I get the idea that babies aren't really gourmands. I got to mix up a little dish of cereal for him yesterday and then watch as he learned to eat from a little baby spoon. More of it landed outside than in, but by the end of his interest, he really started to get the hang of the whole sucking off the spoon thing.

What keeps me enthralled with Alec is contemplating how he learns to do things, seemingly by mimicry. He watches us talking, and he begins moving his mouth and making sounds, too. He watches us eat, and his little hands begin traveling to and from his mouth. It is weird to think that at one time all the things we do automatically without even thinking--eating from a spoon, drinking through a straw, walking, sitting up, talking--all these things were mysteries we had to sort out for ourselves. And now the mystery is in contemplating how really complex all these simple things must seem to a little guy trying to figure it all out for the first time.