Bookish Virginia

When Linnaea was so small that her whole head fit in my hand, I would hold her like that, my thumb and pinky resting gently on her two ears, and just stare at her, and marvel at how simple life could actually be.

Nowadays, I am in awe at the words that come tumbling out of her mouth. She is four years old, and I cannot imagine a creature more complex. How could all that complexity once have fit between my thumb and my pinky? The sheer intricacy of the brain, that gray (and white) mush that is housed within our skull, is enough to knock this geek girl’s socks right off.

Before Linnaea was born, I started reading this book:

It totally blew my mind. I learned about how the baby’s brain develops starting from the fetal stages and I could not put it down. Way better than What to Expect When You’re Expecting any day of the week.

I’m not really sure what the point of all this is. I recently started taking classes in speech-language pathology at the University of Washington. I’m going through a major career change, and I’m finally taking some courses in neurology, and all I can say is, if I had it to do over, I think I would have gone into neurology right off the bat. Not that I’m in any way smart enough to have been able to hack it in such a field, but because I feel like my life is so much more complete now that I’m learning some of this stuff.

I’m sure this will be a theme I come back to many times, but I wanted to just touch the surface of it right now.