This hippo (seen immediately above falling through the air after being dropped for the moment by Mabel) did not start out its life in my daughter and son-in-law's San Francisco apartment as a toy. Long before there was a baby, there were cute little objects scattered on many ledges and shelves and enjoyed in a spirit of gentle irony (in accordance with the tastes of a certain social class in a certain time and place) by the adults who lived there. Nowadays the resident infant has appropriated most of these for her own serious purposes.
Certain objects, certain books come into high favor on a given day for reasons that are never entirely discernible from the observer's viewpoint but are perfectly understood by the baby herself. Tots of Many Lands (the bilingual Spanish-English edition) succeeded the windowsill hippo as an object of deep interest on this particular afternoon.
