A sense of wonder

A few months ago, I realized I had never heard Joseph mention any smells, good or bad. I wondered if he maybe didn't have a sense of smell.

It was pretty easy to test -- I put scented lotion on different arms and asked which one had the lotion. He passed that test multiple times, so I stopped worrying, but he still seemed not to care about smells despite our encouragement. We would have him smell a flower and ask if it smelled more like a flower or more like, say, pizza, and he would usually guess wrong.

And then all of the sudden, in the last month or so he suddenly cares a ton about smells! He noticed dirty diapers and brownies and grills and leaves and all sorts of stuff. Because I sprayed disinfectant where we found mouse evidence, I think he associates the smell of cleaners with mice so he has been telling me today he smells mice when it's really just that I cleaned the bathroom.

The best part of this transformation is that cooking has become more gratifying. He came in while I was making dinner and announced, "It smells SO GOOD in here! It smells like meat!" It was actually meatless fajitas I was making (he was just smelling seasonings), but he was even willing to try it sans meat. After all, as Kevin pointed out, things usually taste like they smell. He spit out the bean as soon as it was in, but that was more than he's done before.

Point being, I'm glad he's discovered the magical world of smells.