Learning to put things back?

 

HG caught her first bug this weekend, but thank God it passed quickly and she was soon back to exploring and taking the apartment apart... Truth be told, even the couple of days she was sick, it was only really at night, by day she was frisky and playful, she was really only ill at night when she had a fever and was feeling pretty rotten, nursing all through the night.

By Friday night dinner she was clearly feeling much better and keen to join Abba and Ima at the table for some chicken and cucumber salad, before announcing "I done!" and going off to play.

As Abba went to the fridge to get desert she followed him, spying the box of lychees on the botton shelf and reaching for them. Abba helped her take them to the table and she very proudly presented them to Ima with a smile and a loud "num!". This is one of HG's latest favourite foods and she ate them with gusto, followed by her very first blueberry which she spat out in disgust - they were not the most flavourful. 





Motzei Shabbat HG decided that she hadn't really explored the tv room adequately. Ima and Abba don't usually allow HG to watch more than about an hour or so of TV a week, but during the two evenings she was sick and feeling lousy they let her watch some Seasame Street videos to help take her mind off things.

She had a great time, especially as the star of the ABC video was Baby Bear, and as an avid reader of HG's blog knows, bears are one of her most absolute favourite animals. She started pointing to the tv with a questioning "beah?" wanting to see another Seasame Street video.



With no tv to watch she decided to explore around the television instead. As you can see from the photos, HG took all the videos off the video stand, just as she likes to do with her bookshelves. She seemed a little perplexed by the concept of "video" - she seemed to expect them to be like books and couldn't work out what the point of them was.

After studying them for a while she decided that if they aren't good to read then she might as well return them to the shelf. Her stacking skills still leave something to be desired but it was nice to see that she is starting to get the concept of putting things back on the shelf instead of only taking them down...

Still, it doesn't seem to help much with the bookshelves, she likes having books scattered around the floor so that whenever she feels like "reading" there is a book available in every corner of the room.



HG has always like music, but she is getting more interested in songs and dance by the day. She now sometimes requests songs at the Shabbat table, clearly associating the bentschers with zmirot or bentshing. Today as Abba started singing Shir Hama'alot she reached up to the table and handed him a birkon.

She also tried to be helpful with Havdala. She has known for a long time that Havdala includes smelling things, as soon as she sees Abba start to set up the Havdala things she starts to smile and twitch her nose, sniffing in excitement. She loves the bsamim. This evening she stood next to Abba during Havdala, clearly anticipating the bsamim. When he reached down and passed her the sachet to smell, she held it to her nose, and instead of then running away with it, as she sometimes does, she walked over to Ima and passed it to her, then took it back to sniff some more.

HG has a new puzzle which she adores. It is a simple wooden puzzle with lift out pieces showing the Jewish festivals. She loves taking the pieces out but isn't that great at putting them back in their slots. Her first instinct was to pick up the pieces for Ima to put back. Instead for each piece that HG handed Ima, say a seder plate or dreidl, Ima first sings a song about the relevant holiday, tell HG what the item is and then guides HG's hand to roughly the right slot in the puzzle, on which the name of the holiday is written.

HG has now come to associate this puzzle with a sort of "juke box". She picks out a piece, say a hand holding a sapling, and gives it to Ima, sometimes saying "naynaynay" (HG's word for song or nigun) and sits expectantly, waiting to hear the song. If Ima then says, put the sapling in the Tu B'shvat slot, HG puts the piece on the slot, still having trouble getting it to fit, but she seems to be learning which piece goes with which holiday, and she certainly likes the songs. One of her new words is "dreidl" - not very seasonal, but at least she knows what the picture shows!

HG seems to be picking up a few new words or phrases each day. She has started sometiems trying to say "I love you" - "Ay la ya", which is very cute. Ima and Abba aren't sure if she knows what it means, but she seems to know to say it to them.