Imagination at work

Doodle's starting to exhibit signs of great imagination lately. It's fun to watch her learn to put some concepts together, like treating her baby doll like a real baby. She loves to feed her baby its bottle and rock her before putting her "night nights". She also likes to share her food with her dolls. The funniest yet has been watching her try to feed French fries to her Littlest Pet Shop toy that came in her Happy Meal. It's the equivalent of trying to feed Doodle a ten foot long four by four! Luckily, her toys are good sports about the force feedings.

Last week, while we were at Ikea, I handed Doodle a stuffed dog to see if she liked it. She started petting it and saying, "Niiiie. Niiiie. Niiiie." It took me a second to figure out she was saying, "Nice" like she was petting a real dog. We have worked hard to make sure she treats the dogs and cat nicely so that they aren't scared of her and don't try to hurt her. Last night, while I was sitting on the edge of the tub watching her play in the bath, she started petting my arm and saying, "Niiie, niiiiiiie, niiiiiiiiie!" It was too cute for words!

After her bath, I took her out to the living room to get a dry diaper on. We were playing for a while and Andy was laying on the couch. Well, he ended up falling asleep and snoring. Doods stops what she's doing and puts her finger to her lips and says, "SSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Then she walks over to Andy, smacks him on the arm, and gets in his face and does the same thing when he opens his eyes. I told him that she didn't want him snoring anymore. It didn't work. He fell back to sleep and started snoring again. Well, this time, Doods took the opportunity while I was hiding from her under a blanket to hit Andy in the face with a book. He decided that it was time to get up and go to bed. I guess that method was a little more effective than shushing him!


Edited to add: Earlier today Andy called me into the living room. He told Doods to keep playing and not pay attention to me because he wanted me to see what she was doing. She was trying to put her shorts on her baby doll. It was so adorable! She's also tried to put her shoes on her doll before, too. She did manage to put one of her own shoes on earlier today. Pretty impressive for a not quite eighteen month old!