Sharing Books

Jorryn has been interacting more and more with other children. She enjoys playing with others, especially boys (probably because they typically play with a different set of toys than she does), but she does play with girls too. Tonight, Jorryn was playing with a little boy that has been coming fairly regularly in childcare. He was sitting at a table, when Jorryn came up to him and handed him a book and then sat down next to him with another book. Next, she opened her word book depicting facial parts, and says, "Where's the nose, Trevor?" and then she turns the page and says, "I see.... an apple!" which is our book version of the "I spy" game. It was so fun to see her share her love of books with another child.

Jorryn has a favorite word book that she likes to read almost every night before bedtime. There's a particular page that depicts children performing different movements, such as running, jumping, crouching, balancing on one foot, etc. Jorryn loves to turn to that page and copy each movement. She even imitates the children laughing and singing. It's so funny to hear her "fake" laugh.

Lately, Jorryn's been rebelling against her normal bedtime routine. She keeps coming up with sneaky creative ways of stalling her bedtime. She's thirsty (yet she has a cup of water in her bed), she wants to go pet Toby the cat, she wants a piece of banana, she wants her giant duck or her dragon, she needs to go find her baby, etc. It's actually funny how she tries to manipulate us and has actually succeeded a few times before we caught on to her new tricks. I'm sure it'll get a lot trickier as she grows out of her crib and we can no longer keep her contained.

Yesterday, Jorryn developed a rash on her bottom and we'd run out of our normal rash creme. I had bought this creme mist a while back, and we decided to use it. Well, apparently it contained alcohol or something equally uncomfortable, because she started gasping and crying saying, "It burns, it's burning!" We let her know that we did not intentionally try to hurt her bottom, by letting her dump the burning rash mist in the trash. When we got her laid back down, I found some leftover creme and we applied it to her bottom and she was like, "Ooh feels better. Doesn't burn!" I can't help but marvel at her ability to communicate feelings. I'm so grateful for a baby sign language book called "Feelings" that I bought for her when she was a few months old. That book along with our attempts to emulate the feelings really seems to have helped her understand emotions. Today, I know that Jorryn understands and recognizes and expresses, hurt, sad, happy, scared, surprised, tired and love.