About a month ago, when we were setting up our veggie garden, we had one and a half cubic metres of soil delivered and dumped in the drive-way just outside our back gate. The two boys thought it was fantastic…it made a magnificent pile to play in and on. Nathan started helping me to move the soil by filling up buckets and dumping them into the veggie garden, but he soon lost interest and climbed to the top of the pile where he played for ages. Most of the time he moved soil into his bucket using his black gardening trowel. Toby also loved playing in the dirt and climbed up to the top. He used Nathan’s trowel to help fill up the bucket, but Nathan wanted it back and wouldn’t let Toby play with it any more.
I was busy moving soil but I did notice that Toby climbed down the dirt pile and took off crawling towards the house. A few minutes later I wondered what he was up to, so I went to the back door and found Toby on his way back out of the house. In his hand he held the orange shovel from the toys the boys have for playing in the sand.
I was amazed. I just didn’t know that an 11-month-old baby was able to determine that he wanted a trowel, realize that he knew where to find one and then set off on his own to get it. We all now refer to it as ‘Toby’s orange shovel’.
