Peekaboo

I know what you’re thinking—this guy isn’t going to write an entire post on peekaboo, right? Surely it’s just a catchy title that he’s going to put a clever spin on, right? Wrong. I am writing about peekaboo. Hear me out.
Okay, so I’m biased, but HP is doing some pretty incredible stuff around here. Why just yesterday, she sorted the knit delicates and the colors into two neat piles. Oh, I’m kidding of course. I don’t even know what knit delicate means, really—I surely wouldn’t burden my children with such things.
Seriously, though, she started playing peekaboo. Okay, big whoop, right? Every kid ever played peekaboo at least once, whether they wanted to or not. Well, it feels like a big whoop to me, and she IS the second child, might I remind you. So why is that?
Well, she started around 7 months, maybe 7 and a half. And this is not me ducking behind the back of the chair and going, “Where’s Daddy? Where did Daddy go?” followed by her giggling when I startle her. That’s mere child’s play compared to what I’m talking about.
So one day she was sitting in the car seat with a blanket over her. She started tugging at the blanket until it covered her face, then she yanked it down with an ear-to-ear smile plastered on her face.
Though never the sharpest arrow in the quiver, even I was able to deduce that she was, apropos of nothing, INITIATING a game of peekaboo. This stood out for a couple reasons:

1. I don’t remember Bub ever, ever playing peekaboo with us. Perhaps we parked that genius hatchback in his garage a bit prematurely. Or maybe he just doesn’t care for the game, finds it passé, and would rather shoot dice. Whatever the case, he never did it, so I wasn’t even looking for it.
2. Not only was it out of the blue, but she did it using her blanket, which we had never done. This was not a monkey-see, monkey-do kind of thing; I think this shows some pretty incredible generalization skills.

Well, then the skeptic in me started in on the case. I thought maybe it was a fluke–she just happened to have pulled the blanket down at that moment, she was already smiling, etc. And I just happened to be standing there. Maybe she just learned that she could avoid my ugly mug by hiding under the blanket. Was her mother in on this?
But then a couple days later, she did it again, only this time she pulled her dress up over her face. And while I can’t say I was a huge fan of this medium, it did in fact reinforce my theory. The child’s a genius, right? Or is this completely normal? I must confess I haven’t done much (read: any) baby-booking about this. Hey, she’s the second child, what can I say?