Buckets and Babies

Two subjects for today's blog. Both have to deal with obsessions of my small daughter. Once upon a time a few months back, I noticed my overenthusiastic little girl attempting to carry too many things at once, dropping them, and sitting down to cry in frustration. We went to Target and purchased 5 little green buckets with brown ribbon handles and pretty birds and mushrooms on them. She used them for everything from there on out. Morning snacks - in the bucket. Toys - in the bucket. Crayons - in the bucket. We started to worry when she wouldn't accept her meals in her high chair anymore. She would cry and say, "All done," until we let her down, then ask for her dinner to be placed in the bucket. We chose to put our collective parental foot down at that point. Most of the buckets got ruined by frequent snacks, pinecones, and full meals being placed in them. When we got rid of the last bucket, she was back to carrying a juice cup, 8 animal crackers, a fistful of craisins, and approximately 13 letters of the alphabet in her two tiny hands. And was also very frustrated. She considered herself handicapped and resorted to using tupperware and the bin that holds her blocks, neither of which were sufficient.  When she was regularly eating her meals in her high chair again, I went to Target for 4 more buckets. They only had small tin pails in holiday themes, but they were buckets. I came home and she pounced on me "Mamaaa!" After a hug as big as her arms could manage, she started rummaging through my bags. I heard a delighted shriek. "Buckets, Mama! Buckets! Buckets!" In seconds, she had not 1, not 2, but all 4 buckets in her clutches and was running around the house putting various objects in them.

Lilah has also become enraptured with something else. We prefer her not to watch excessive television, but we have exposed her to various programs from time to time. The only thing she's showed a slight interest in so far has been the Secret of Kells. We love it too. She watches out of the corner of her eye while playing and stops to pay attention to her favorite parts. Here's one of them.

One day, I watched the documentary Babies.

Lilah was enthralled from start to finish. She didn't move. She barely blinked. She has watched it approximately 700 times since then. Sometimes she asks questions. "Baby sad, Mama?" Sometimes she just watches how babies interact with the wide world around them. If she's ever having a rough day, she wants to go find her doll (she wanders through the house calling her. "Baby giiiirl! Baby giiiirl!"), finds her, picks her up, kisses her up and coos, and crawls up to the couch to get settled. It's 79 blessed minutes of silence. I don't feel guilty because it's educational. I'm very tired of it, but it's not annoying like a lot of children's programs. She's learning and enjoying watching the joy of babies around the world. I like that she's being exposed to different cultures, foods, languages, and ways of life. She likes that 4 adorable, roly-poly babies are playing on the screen in her living room. Everybody wins.