People- (and Machine-) Watching

One of the things I love about living in a big city like San Francisco is the people-watching. When I was still in grad school, I used to love to sit in cafes, writing, reading, watching other people writing and reading and talking, basically allowing a little bit of my mental energy to drift off and notice other things so that I wouldn't feel so locked inside my own thoughts, my own Word document.  I don't have much time for sitting in cafes these days, but when I find myself at parks, in grocery stores, I find myself doing a little bit of people-watching as I go about my business.  Mostly of other moms and dads, but those observations are a different post.

This one I wanted to be about Seamus, who watches everything.  People, machines, cars, bicycles, everything that moves.  Here he is, looking out one of the windows in our living room.

They are tearing up the corner curbs on our block to replace steep curbs with wheelchair- and stroller-friendly ramp-like curbs.  There are jackhammers, temporary orange fences, men at work, all sorts of things that Dude finds fascinating.  Several times a day, he goes over to the window, steps up on a little stool we got for him so that he could see out better, and watches.  Sometimes he brings along his snack cup, sometimes he brings along a toy.

After spending so many months trying to create a world for him to see--holding up toys, setting up mobiles in a way that he could see them, etc., it's amazing to watch him getting lost in his own little world.  I look at these pictures and think, "Jeez, those telephone wires are ugly.  When is the city going to finish that project of putting all the wires underground?"  I texted Patrick a photo like this the other day, and he responded "I need to wash those windows."  I can't quite imagine what Seamus thinks about as he watches the dudes working on the curb, but I don't think it's the state of the windows or the telephone wires.

What do you think, what are one-year-olds saying to themselves as they watch the world go by?