Make Believe

One of the things that I am most astonished by in Lilah's development is her sense of make believe/pretend.

It just seems like she's so little to really grasp pretend as well as she does.

She has a little tea set and she'll bring out the tea and "pour" it into the cups and we all have to have some. "Mo tea, Mommy!" she'll say.

"Baby's tea!" she'll say.

Then she'll pretend to drink some, too.

The set also has pretend cakes.

Tonight she brought them all out on little plates and offered us a "bite."

Amazing. She doesn't think they are to eat for real. She doesn't think we are really eating them. She knows it's just pretend.

And the kid can spot a playground from a thousand miles away.

We'll drive past a park or a restaurant and she'll shout, "PWAY, MOMMY!!! PWAY, PEASE??" from the backseat.

She is so full of joy!

At night she's gotten to where she will let us read her a book but she doesn't care to rock much most nights. She'd rather you put her in her bed so she can read on her own. But she was reading by the light of her little constellation lady bug, and I was starting to worry that she was going to hurt her eyes. So this past weekend I got her a little tap light for her to keep in her bed. I thought it would be easy for her to turn off and on as she felt necessary. As we found it in the store, I told her what it would be for. She rode around holding it in the buggy the rest of the trip. "Baby's light" she'd say. "Baby's."

That night at bedtime when she said she was ready to get in the crib, I showed her how the light work. She loved the shadows it made of me on the ceiling as I leaned over her in the crib. And after we figured out how to best turn it off and on, she said, "Ni, ni, Mommy" and blew me a kiss and I was dismissed.

And that's how it's been every night since. She gets her story. She rocks just a minute. She's ready to get in her bed and read.

My baby is a big girl.

Her language is keeping up as quickly as her imagination. She repeats so much now...I've really had to watch what I say ("JOOT!" is a regular exclamation you might hear when something goes wrong - thank goodness I cleaned that up early!). She has started making three-word sentences. Just tonight she said, "Nidney made mess!" when discovering a pile of fluff the Syd had left after disemboweling a chew toy. "Baby's sbockly shews," and "Baby's sbockly bow" are other commonly heard phrases.

She's learning colors. She can say purple and blue pretty clearly. Pink = mink; green = mean. Red is just one you need to know that she's saying. She likes the alphabet song, but only knows a few letters (E and B are favorites.) She likes to "spell" = "B-E-E-I-A-D!!" is something you might hear. What she thinks she's spelling, I have no idea. But it's cute.

She thinks there are "DUE!" of everything. But she also knows how to give "Bive."

She loves Tinker Bell and Elmo and Mickey Mouse and Thomas the Train.

She likes to see busses and trucks (she says "bus" much like Rudy used to say "Bud" on The Cosby Show.")

She gives Ben and I hugs and kisses now without prompting.

She is an all-around awesome, awesome kid.