Of late peek-a-boo has become a new game, a darker game. The games name is "Where Go?" and it seems to have no rules. No ending or beginning. You are always playing "Where Go?" and you don't always know what the object of the game is.
At first, soon after she started playing with her Mickey and Minnie figurines, she came to me and said "Plu where go?" I didn't get it at first but my wife clarified, "She wants to know where Pluto is."
After a few moments of searching I found Pluto stuck into the corner of a bag we had packed for the next day. Not even twenty minutes later Pluto had found his way into the cracks of the couch, under the entertainment center, behind a book...and each time a distraught Toddler would come collect her father with pleas of, "Where Go?"
"Where Go?" is a fun game as far as watching her development is concerned. It's amazing to see how fast she learns and how creative she is. But it's also scary. I watched her hide Pluto under the Christmas Tree shirt and say nothing. We had breakfast, lunch, watched Frozen and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Not until that evening did she say, "Pluto where go?" This game has no rules. It is anarchy.
The other day I was making her lunch and couldn't find her milk cup so I asked, "Baby, bring your milk! Want some milk?" To which she yelled back, "Where Go?"
Now there is nothing that I despise more then her milk cup. She leaves this thing overturned on the couch, rug, wood floor, dogs back, you name it. And every single time there's just enough milk to make a smelly mess. So you can imagine how disconcerting it was for her to have played "Where Go?" with a possibly still-full milk cup. Hours went buy, hours of distress and fear. A darkness swept over the room as my toddler continued to taunt me with those two hateful words. "Where Go, dada?" Where go?
Well, it went under the entertainment center, too far back for me to reach when I'd felt under it, and it caught on the bottom when I moved the whole damn thing. Instead, when I had finally given up hope, and collapsed onto the couch in shame, I saw a pink reflection on the wooden floor and army crawled my way to victory.
"Where Go?" hasn't slowed down. It's grown more complicated. We are constantly playing multiple games of "Where Go?" at once with a variety of toys. I don't know the current score of our ongoing struggle but I imagine she has a winning record. Especially considering that she'll hide a toy, lose it for real, find it a few days later and be excited to see it. The "self-pass" of "Where Go?" and honestly a cheap way to win, if you ask me.
I'm going to be sad when "Where Go?" becomes "Hide and Go Seek." Just like I'm going to be sad when book stops being "gook" and milk stops being "nook." There's an honesty to her development and a deep joy that I gain from watching it. It's a bittersweet moment whenever she loses some part of her babyhood and grows up. Its happening about as fast as I expected, which is to say, far too fast. I feel like one day soon I'll be looking at this grown woman, ready to take the World by storm and I'll be whispering "Where Go?" wistfully with her mother.
Then again maybe our next child will be a boy. They never grow up.
