Imagination, independence, empathy and song

I drive the fire truck!

 We are in the midst of a phenomenal visit from Oma and E is loving all the attention!  She is going a million miles an hour and having a blast.  She's been doing some wonderful imaginative play and showing a great deal of independence, some surprising empathy and through it all there has been songs!!

E loves to play with her "babies" she swaddles them and feeds them milk and changes their diapers.  She also loves to cook in her kitchen.  Her current specialty is "yummy sauce"  which she makes by pretending to mix everything on her spice rack into a pot, putting the pot in the oven, then on the stove and stirring it then proudly serving it up to us and declaring it "yummy!"    

I climb the rock!

She also loves to play with her "people" which are little knock off duplo people.  We build parks, houses, zoos all sorts of wonderful things out of the duplos and she plays with her people.  She has little conversations between people, she has them play on the equipment at the park, the animals escape the zoo and have to be caught by the people.  It's wonderful.

I swing monkey!

Recently she watched an episode of Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood where the characters hosted a birthday party for stuffed animals.  E was already obsessed with birthdays from reading her Elmo's Birthday book and singing to relatives who have had birthdays lately  but this took the obsession to a new level.  She has a birthday cake toy that she's played with a few times, but after seeing the cartoon she took it out, brought her monkeys to the table and then requested "party hat?" from me. We then had cake, sang the birthday song, played birthday games, and even wrapped and opened presents for the monkeys.  She was in heaven.   We have revisited the game several times.
She has been taking "friends" to the playground.  When she takes her monkey she makes it hang from the monkey bars and play.  It's adorable.

I play dragon!

E's most common phrase these days is "BABY DO IT!" usually shouted at the top of her lungs, hence the caps.  She is becoming fiercely independent.  She is most stubborn about brushing her teeth, getting into her highchair.  She will quite often work herself into frustration at whatever task but refuse help when offered with an indignant "baby do it!"  She also loves to help whenever she can.  She loves to help cook for real in the kitchen, so much that when I start cooking she will go to the dining room and drag a chair into the kitchen so she can stand on it to reach the counter to help.
She also likes to tout her accomplishments.  whenever she does something (and sometimes only midway through) she will shout "I did it!" with gusto.

I oo-oo (monkey)

 E is also showing a great capacity for empathy.  She has always been bothered when she hears other kids crying but her empathy is reaching new levels.  Last weekend gootball was on TV and a commercial came on where a toy robot falls down because it has a dead battery.  At the end of the commercial E started screaming bloody murder.  We didn't realize she'd been watching the commercial so it took us a while to get her to calm down to tell us what was wrong.  Eventually she blurted out "SAD ROBOT!" and we put 2 and 2 together.  It took showing her the first half of the commercial again on my phone to show her that the  robot was ok to get her to completely calm down.  Occasionally she will still get all flustered and sad and say "sad robot" and needs reassurance that the robot got new batteries.

Mew, mew, I'm cute and
I know it

We went to the Renfest to celebrate our 4th anniversary and took E to the joust!  She was very engaged until the lances started shattering and riders started falling off their horses, then she started flipping out, screaming bloody murder.  "SAD HORSIE!" thankfully the riders got back up and we were able to show her they were all okay.  We took her to a pony ride that day and she kept saying "no fall down" I had to show her that the horsie had a seatbelt to reassure her she wouldn't fall off the horse.  After that she rode the horse like a champ. She was the smallest kid there and on the biggest pony but she did great!

And through it all she sings.  When she sees a barn in a picture book she starts to sing "Old MacDonald"  When she has new food on her plate she sings "Try a little bit" from Daniel Tiger.  When she's bored she sings "Wheels on the bus"  When it's raining she sings "rain rain go away" and she sings, and sings and sings, and it is the sweetest sound in the world!