I’m becoming more and more aware of how things that I take for granted every day of Lily’s early childhood might start slipping away. I’m starting to notice things in the background of pictures of her babyhood that make me think, “Oh yeah! We used to do that all the time!” Things that were common back then, but we’ve moved on from. It’s surprising how few of those things there are when you don’t have kids. But now everything, from a day’s overall schedule to specific mealtime rituals, morphs over the course of months until it’s entirely different. I want to set some of these things down, so that maybe I’ll be able to hold onto them when this phase of her life has turned into something else.
So here is a short list of things that Lily loves…
Dancing in the Morning – We have this CD of horrible cover versions of kid-friendly rock songs (“Walking on Sunshine”, “We Are Family”, “Build Me Up Buttercup”, etc.) that she loves to dance to first thing in the morning. More accurately, she likes *me* to dance to them while she throws herself over my shoulder. We always do it in the bathroom, and sometimes she dances too, but more often she just looks at herself in the mirror while I sway back and forth. I like it too… she’s still sleepy and warm, and I know it’s something I’m going to look back on fondly once she’s outgrown it.
Strawberry Shortcake – This is the first non-educational TV show she’s fallen in love with. She loves the books, the figurines, the DVDs, everything about it. The franchise has gone through some changes in the past few years (S-Short and her friends now look like they’re dressed for prep school and have long, straightened hair), but that doesn’t seem to confuse her at all.
“Girl Stickers” – Melissa and Doug has a line of sticker books, and Lily’s favorite is the one full of dress-up stickers. Each of the 10 sheets you get in one pack has 8 stickers of undressed girl figures, and then enough shirts, pants, dresses, shoes, gloves, hair bows, tiaras, etc. to outfit them all. She would do these *all* *the* *time* if we were to let her, but they’re kind of expensive so we have to limit her to one sheet a day. She’s amazingly accurate with putting the clothes on correctly, and matching ensembles by color, even though they’re not laid out that way on the sheet.
Megabloks – We have 2 big bags of about 80 big building blocks that Lily likes to build with me. When she was smaller, she wanted to build “showcases”, which meant a single tower that would be as big and as tall as we could make it. Now she likes me to make little sections of wall that she can arrange into stores with aisles and escalators, tunnels, etc. One of her favorite arrangements is to make a restaurant, which means an area inside which we’ll put little square blocks for tables, and little rectangular blocks for seats. Then she’ll get a bunch of her Fisher Price Little People and seat them all. Occasionally she’ll ask me to build characters from one of her favorite TV shows (Team Umizoomi or Yo Gabba Gabba), and I’ve kind of figured out how to make crude representations of them – making them the correct color seems to be the most important thing.
Reading – Often the first thing Lily will do when I come home is to bring me a book and ask if she can read it to me (which means if I can read it to her). She has a pretty good number of several series (Curious George and Mr. Putter & Tabby come to mind), but she also loves the Little Einsteins Picture Dictionary, and knows a whole lot of words thanks to it. She’s going through a little bit of a phase of looking at catalogs – American Girl, Oriental Trading Company, Fisher Price, Party Outfitters, etc. I dread the day when she figures out that everything in those is purchasable.
Singing/Dancing competition shows – Ever since she was born, Lily’s been interested in American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, etc. Right now we’re watching The Voice. I think the main draw is the fact that they’re live shows with audiences, and have lots of music and colors. Plus, they’re the only shows that we tend to watch while they’re actually airing, so it’s a good time in the evening to play on the living room floor and watch.
Outer Space – Lily loves things that deal with space. She can recognize some of the more obvious planets (Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars) and can even tell you if they’re hot or cold. We bought her some little plastic glow-in-the-dark planets and hung them from a mobile in her room. The mobile’s been there since before she was born, and is designed to clip photos to, but we never got around to printing any out to use for it. Amy’s mom got the idea to clip the planets to it, and voila! Instant model of the solar system. Also, Lily’s nightlight is a ladybug with a hard carapace that has little star-shaped holes in it. When you turn it on, an LED light inside projects constellations on the walls and ceiling in one of three colors.
Jigsaw Puzzles - A few weekends ago when we were at my parents' house, Lily and I started working on a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle. She’s gotten really good at the 10-20 piece floor puzzles we have both at home and at their place, and she wanted to try a different one. We didn’t get very far, of course, but she liked running her hands through all the pieces. While we were all seated around the table for dinner, I said to her, “If you stay as interested in outer space and jigsaw puzzles as you are now, we’re going to get along just fine.”
