I keep forgetting that my child can play by herself. I guess I feel that since I am away from her all day, I should always be at her side when we are at home. But then I remember that it is good for her to have a little alone play time. Right now she is busy running back and forth across the living room, occasionally stopping to watch me type. Now she is trying so very hard to sit on her red Elmo chair while carefully shoving her bear blankie next to her on one side, and a large dog hand puppet on the other side, and still keep a hold of the little pink pig toy….oh, there goes the pig toy, shoved under her left butt cheek. Now she just stood up and hit the Elmo chair so that it giggles (the chair is officially called the Elmo Giggle and Shake, and whenever it senses movement it starts vibrating and giggling). Sometimes she doesn’t sit down with enough force to make it start giggling, and that is when she turns around and hits it to make it start to giggle.
She is in constant search for that item in the living room that she shouldn’t play with…when she sees it from across the room, she zeros in like a bird dog and heads straight for it. Oops, there goes the black Sharpie marker. She constantly uses pens to touch other things just to see what noise it makes. A sharpie on a pom-pom left over the Capital One game isn’t noisy enough, so off she goes.
Also in mid-play, Mallory will go right over to Cooper, squat down and say hi. Sometimes she is nice and will get him one of his toys to play with, shoving it right in Cooper’s face until he takes it from her or she gets bored and moves on, whichever comes first.