Baby Oubliette

Since she reached eight months (on 4/1), Is. has grown keenly aware that most
of the sitting posts (bouncy chair, door-frame jumper, pack-n-play, and Baby Einstein contraption)
are the functional equivalent of an oubliette. I don’t mean to imply that we are
torturing our daughter by putting her in these what fun! places, although if
you asked her (could she talk), she would almost certainly add a few indignant
qualifiers. It’s just that she is cognizant of the shift in attention–often
away from her–when she is put in one of these devices for more or less
independent play. The shift in attention might be understood as a momentary
forgetting, but that’s not the only correspondence: like the medieval chamber,
the Einstein can only be escaped from the top.

Baby Oubliette

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