the pincer grasp

Oh, said one person we recently ran into, the flapping stage. Yes, especially when she was excited, she would beat her hands--her entire arms, really--against her sides like a chicken flapping its wings. The effect is comic. But this morning I watched her in her high chair as she tried to pick up a slippery piece of tofu between her thumb and forefinger. The pincer grasp! The same dexterity we admired in a nine-month old baby playing with a piece of lint on the floor, at her six-month doctor’s visit. So, here I am, glued to the spot, riveted really, in front of her high chair, NPR blaring the recession news around us, the kettle on the stove whistling, as she carefully maneuvers a piece of slimy tofu, between her thumb and forefinger, turns her wrists and brings the whole operation, now the BBC announcing itself with its cascading electronic muezzin call, toward her mouth. My goodness! Such work we are born into!