The levels of exploration...

Shoshanna's current favorite game is playing with a bunch of rocks (read: broken concrete) in our driveway. She stacks them, bangs them together, etc. Yesterday I watched her hold a rock, look at the rock, look at her leg, look at the rock again. Then she pulled up her pants leg and started rubbing the rock against her bare leg. You could almost see her little brain going, "Hrm... I wonder what happens if I do THIS?"

This evening she was playing with the same pile of rocks and she discovered a small hole. It's probably slightly bigger than a quarter in diameter, and maybe half an inch deep. First she methodically used her little fingers to scrape all of the dirt she could out of the hole. The she proceeded to see which rocks would fit in the hole, and in which orientations, and if she could still stack the rocks even when one was in the hole.

And then she got to the next logical step. She leaned forward and licked the hole. And immediately started trying to scrape the resultant mud off of her tongue. I don't think she'll try licking holes again. (Matthew opines: "Yeah, she will.")