The two-year-old & the iPhone

My niece turned two yesterday and is probably more adept at using her mom's iPhone than I am. To see that little thumb deftly scrolling across the screen in search of new games to play is a cute and almost disconcerting sight. I remember in either eighth grade or freshman year of high school when my friends and I all started to get digital cameras. We developed the instinct of taking photos and then crowding around the little screen to see the photo, i.e. to see how we looked.

Well, for Kathryn, that habit has already developed. She smiles for cameras, acts when she's on video, and then promptly asks "I see? I see!"

On her second birthday, at just few minutes into the day with "afrackers" to munch, she's ready with an endearing, sleepy grin for the camera.


That evening, she devoured a scrumptious cupcake and then stuck her fingers in four more merely to eat the frosting and fun sprinkles. Of course it was all captured on camera. And the fun didn't stop there: the mountain of gifts provided many minutes of sheer delight.

And even though she had just personally watched her mom enter with the lighted cupcakes and heard us sing "Happy birthday," viewing it on her dad's iPhone again was just too good to pass up-- "I see!"

It's fascinating to observe her behavior that's unrelated to technology too: "owies" are healed by a kiss, an exhaustion-induced crying fit is soothed by a hug and a song (even by her aunt!), and the moments when her love is apparently just over-flowing, a run-into-your-legs-super-hug is just the thing to express it. I admire the simplicity and purity of her emotions. She's sad or clingy or scared or proud for a time and when the situation changes--the plane has passed, the new, exciting contraption called a toilet has been flushed, etc--she is back to her happy norm. She is, of course, beginning the typical human behavior of selfishness: "mine" is a frequently shouted word. Sometimes she correctly applies it: when she's eating and her daddy teasingly reaches for a strawberry, for example. But really, Kathryn, that entire playground cannot be yours, let the little boy step on the play structure too.

I've seen her sprint about screaming with delight and then be still and calm, cheerfully panting for breath. She doesn't have the typical anxiety so unfortunately common in adults. It seems small children like her can be perfectly at peace when they have the blessing of loving parents. The confidence she has in her own astounds me--I watch her fly about in her dad's arms or sit on high shelves or pet a hissing cat without a care as I await the worst, tense and fearful. She entirely trusts her mother and father.

So this is what faith like a child looks like. I'm glad to be reminded.