Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Play Time

One of the cool things about having two kids is it gives you a whole new perspective on how children behave at certain ages.  The stages are the same, but how the child acts within those stages can be very different.  Ela skipped crawling, for example, but crawled up and down stairs for a long time.  Lily, on the other hand, crawled until she figured out that walking meant she could hold things.  Now, she only wants to walk up and down steps, too.
The girls are very much alike in many ways, but their differences stand out more to me because I see them all the time.  The place I see these differences the best is when they are playing.  I learn so much about the girls from play time in general, but especially when they play pretend.  I have been reveling for awhile now in the joy of hearing Ela tell me what she is playing when she pretends.  Lily has just entered the phase where I can tell she is playing pretend, but dont always know the story.  It's a very exciting step for her. 
Ela's pretend games focus almost exclusively on animals.  The monkey is hurt, the dog is hungry, the elephant is scared, and she is there to save the day.  She is sweet and caring to her animal friends.  Lily is similarly sweet and caring, but her friends are babies.  She holds them, covers them with blankets, plays peekaboo with them, and takes them endlessly in and out of the stroller she got for Christmas.  She says good night to them when she goes to bed.  It is something of a relief to me that they differ in this way because it means that they don't have one favorite toy that they fight over.  Lily's favorites are all babies, and Ela wants the animals.  Only rarely do they fight over one of them, and it usually doesn't last. 
The other thing I've noticed about the girls is that Lily's play seems much more realistic than Ela's ever was.  When Lily plays in their kitchen, a spoon is always a spoon.  With Ela, the spoon was almost never a spoon.  Instead it was a worm, or a wand, or medicine.  Lily plays with the things as they are, Ela assigns roles to toys depending on what is going on in her mind.  It's very interesting to me. 
Another exciting step for the girls is watching them start to play together.  Lily has been interested in playing with Ela for awhile, but Ela has generally opposed this idea.  She has actually become convinced that whatever she wants to play with, Lily is trying to steal from her, even when Lily is halfway across the room completely engrossed in something else.  Lately, though, she has opened to the idea that they could have fun together.  So far, this is only true in the car, but it's a start.  I enlisted her help one afternoon to try to keep Lily awake until we got home so she could have a good nap.  Once Ela understood how to do it, she made it her priority in the car during almost every trip.  She asks Lily what animals say or where her nose is, she plays peekaboo, and the giggling is priceless. 
Some of this pleasantness has transfered to how they interact in the house.  Now when Lily gets a bonk and is crying, Ela tries making funny faces at her to cheer her up.   Sometimes it even works!  Similarly, Lily will pat Ela's back when she's sad, or give her a kiss, though that usually doesn't make her feel much better.  I am so excited to see them at least try to get along.  We should have a lot of fun as they get to know each other. 

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