Returning to places as a parent provides a yardstick for your child’s growth. The last time we visited Table Rock State Park, the Girl just shy of two years old. Her recently bald head was beginning to have enough hair to make her feminine, and she was beginning to talk. (When we watch videos of her at this age, though, neither K nor I can understand much of what she says sometimes.)

That first trip, she toddled along for some of the short hike, but most of the time, either K or I carried her in a frame-less child carrier: twenty pounds of wiggle followed twenty pounds of sweat-inducing insulation.

Three years later, and she is Miss Independence, resisting help on all but the steepest portions of the two-mile loop and occasionally pontificating, “It is time for a break!”

Last trip, she was barely aware of the camera; this trip, she posed. In fact, we had to tell her to stop posing occasionally: she has a tendency to get carried away.

Yet some things have not changed in three years: Baby still is a constant companion, having been hiking in the mountains of Poland, photographed on the town square of Krakow, and one harrowing time, left at Target for one terrifying night.

Imitation is still the order of the day, and fussing-filled frustration will likely be a frequent visitor for years to come.

Yet the changes. We stopped for a break, and the Girl was curious: “Where are we?” K pulled out the map and showed her. At the next bend in the trail, she asked for the map to try to find where we were. The fact that she was completely off is of no importance: the curiosity is the treasure.

Curiosity was enough later to overcome fear and touch a corn snake in the nature center. K took a step further in overcoming that latent terror that seems to be in all of us almost instinctively.

Most telling was the conclusion: splashing about the lake with restricted parental supervision (the swimming area was about to close, so there was no time for us to change anyone but the Girl), she gravitated toward the deeper portions.

She called out, “Look how far away I am from you, Mama!”