Cognitive leaps

Charlotte's thinking has taken another leap forward lately. She is starting in on true pretend-play. She's been caring for baby dolls for quite a while--swaddling them, putting them in the doll stroller for walks, putting them in the doll cradle to go to sleep. But lately it's hit a new level. While reading her new favorite book, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish (Dr Seuss), she got interested in the section about the "gack". The gack looks like a reindeer with big, branching horns on its' head, and the poem talks about throwing rings on the gack, like a ring toss game. Charlotte was actually pretend-picking up the rings in the picture and either handing them to myself or my husband to "toss", or tossing them at the gack herself. She initiated that--it was pretty cool.

She is also connecting ideas really well lately. She can follow more complex commands, like "put your toothbrush away"--she'll carry it into her bathroom and put it in the cup where it's stored. She carried our toothpaste from our bathroom and did the same thing with it. She understands how to throw things away, in various trash cans (she is not yet abusing this knowledge). When she gets something on her hand that she thinks is "yucky" (dinner she spilled on the table usually), she gets down and walks to the sink, demanding a "wash". And then there were the boxers. My husband had left the boxer shorts that he sleeps in in the bathroom yesterday morning. Charlotte was looking at them and I told her that they were Daddy's boxers. She carried them out of the bathroom, repeating the word "box". I was getting ready at the time, and didn't watch her too closely. She apparently found a shoe box in our bedroom, and put the boxers in it. I didn't realize that till later when I noticed that the shoe box was now in her room, and warned my husband that we should probably retrieve it because it contains a pair of worn boxer shorts. Funny kid.