Letting Go

In the words of the American Academy of Pediatrics, by 12 months of age, children should be able to “Let objects go voluntarily.”

Well, the girls have not only achieved, but positively mastered that behavior.  In fact, it constitutes 80% of their waketime activity. 

The girls now enjoy letting anything and everything go.  Food in their hands inevitably drops to the floor (carpet…beige carpet).  Anything on a table within arm’s reach is grasped, pulled off, and let go with no regard for the effects of gravity.  Books are one-by-one withdrawn from the shelf and tossed over their shoulders, as if the girls have been tasked with tunneling through a mountain of paperbacks and depositing the refuse behind them.  Clothes are plucked from drawers and fly through the air.  Laundry is pulled from the dryer and deposited in a wrinkled heap nearby. 

Now tell me, you American Academy of Pediatrics, when do children reach the milestone where they “clean objects up voluntarily”?  I’m waiting!