Emma's Domain

Emma has effectively taken over the family room. Most days when she is in there, she has a ribbon strung across the doorway, though she is more than happy to allow others to enter. 

What does she do in there?

Plays with Legos, listens to music or audio books, and, as of yesterday, paints.

She had asked a few nights ago (10 minutes before bedtime) if she could paint. I told her that she could the next day. She asked again the next day so I started to get the kitchen table ready for her, but she told me she wanted to paint in the family room.

She had set up an empty box as her easel, a little table to set her paints on, we found a blank canvas for her to use, and she has been happily working on her painting for the last 2 days. 

It's fun to walk through the family room at various times throughout the day to see what new Lego creations she has, and what additions she has made to her painting. 

LEGOs and Vets

Gramma loves to buy things for Emma. Gramma will shop all year long for Birthday and Christmas. 

Sometimes, Gramma is not very good at hiding the gifts she has purchased. 

Our last trip up to Gramma and Boppa's, Emma had spied a LEGO box with a horse on it. The kit was for making a vet clinic with horse, dog, and hedgehog included. Gramma explained to Emma the the LEGO set had been intended as a going away gift, something new for her to play with when we moved to Montana. Obviously Emma didn't want to have to wait till then. Gramma was ok with Emma opening it then, but I already had enough things to pack at the moment, and really didn't want to have to pack that as well. Not the best logic because they don't take up a ton of room, but I also wanted her to have something new and exciting to play with when we got to Montana. 

We are once again visiting Gramma (it is, after all, our second favorite place to be). When we got here yesterday, I was unloading the car when I noticed that the LEGO kit was still in the same spot. I saw it before Emma did and I thought, "seeing as we won't be moving to Montana until next year, it would really be a shame to wait that long seeing as Emma is really into LEGOs right now." 

So, I told Emma that if Gramma was ok with it, she could open it anytime she was ready. 

She didn't wait very long. 

Last night: 

All I did was explain to her a bit how the directions worked, helped her open the (many) plastic baggies, and occasionally held the directions for her. She started working on it while dinner was cooking, took a quick break for a bit of mac and cheese, then went back to work while the rest of us ate and chatted. 

She wasn't super excited when bedtime came around, but I told her she could work on it some more as soon as she woke up. 

Which is exactly what she did. 

She had quite a bit done by the time I got up 30 minutes later. She had some help from Boppa before he had to head off to work. 

A play break was needed after all that concentration. 

And now back to the directions. 

Her favorite stuffy, Pepper, was happy to hang out and keep an eye on things.

All done!

And the horse is already getting good quality care :)

Staging Legos

Legos just might be a girls best friend. In our house anyway. I am not sure what prompted Emma to stage and photograph her Legos, but that is what she did today. 

Her first photo

This is when Emma asked me to come see what she was doing. I asked her if she would like some back drops for her photos. 

I also really wanted to get a picture of her photographing her Legos so I gave her an old 35mm (with film) camera and had her take a few pics. 

She really wasn't a fan of the tiny view finder. Technology, aint it grand?

Providing a spear for this Lego man

At this point I just sat back and enjoyed the show. 

Umm, those aren't Legos. 

This, apparently, was the final battle (and photo). 

 

The other thing of interested from today (other than the fact that I ended up taking a 3 hour nap and that I will now be awake until 2 a.m) is that Emma read me a book tonight.

One of my favorite things about our library is their website. I can search through the library's book collection on-line, and reserve any of the books that catch my eye. Don't get me wrong, I love wandering up and down the isles of books, pulling out a random book here and there, but not when Emma is with me. She gets ansty, complains, asks, "When can we go to my section?" about 20 times a minute. So, I prefer to reserve my books on-line and have them waiting for me when I get there. Emma knows our first stop is to pick up our reserved books, then head to the kids section. At this point, I sit and look through the books to decide if I really want to take them home, while Emma searches for books that she would like.

When we went to the library on Thursday, Emma was drawn to the bin of board books. Seeing as she likes to listen to books that are geared towards kids who are 8 and older (we are currently listening to Inkdeath, the third in the Inkheart Trilogy), I figured she should also be able to read/listen to the books geared towards kids 3 and under. Plus, I got to sit in the super comfy extra wide glider rocker to look through my books while she searched for hers.

A sneakier reason for letting her pick out board books is that they typical have easy words, and not very many of them. When confronted with any book other than an easy reader, she will tell me that she can't read, and she believes it. Won't even try. So, I thought maybe a few simple books would help boost her confidence.

Here are the three we read tonight.  

This is from 'Cuddly Animal,' which Emma read to me.

Beautiful Babies (A Horse!)

Now if only she would stop telling me (and herself) that she can't read...

What Time Is It?

No, it isn't Tool Time. Emma has recently started showing interest in figuring out the time according to the analog clock. On a recent trip to Duck Worth Wearing, where we have something like $36 dollars in consignment money, I spied a cool watch. When I asked Emma if she would like it, the answer was yes. 

Did you guess that the watch has horses on it? You would have guessed correctly :) I have been meaning to take some good pictures of the watch, but it hasn't happened. 

This past week, Emma and I went up to Gramma's house just 'cause. One of the mornings there, Emma decided to pull out the box of Legos (mostly from when Jared was little, some from Gramma's teaching years). For some reason the watch was on my mind (possible because it was laying next to me on the couch), and I really wanted to take some pictures of her wearing it, but I didn't want to interrupt her play. I asked if she would mind wearing the watch for a bit so I could take pictures, but that she could just pretend I wasn't there and go about her Lego play. 

Here is what I got. 

I love that the horse is running around the watch, acting as the second hand. I also love that the minute hand and hour hand are different colors. About the only thing I would change is instead of having "1,2,3,4,5..." repeated on the frame of the watch, I would have put, "5,10,15,20, etc." so that Emma can more easily translate the minutes.

"Mama, I don't have any Indian horses at our house!"

This was the Harry Potter Lego section.

Mama- "Emma, what time is it?"

"11:00"

It sure was :) 

But really, it was time to leave her be so she could get lost in her world of Legos.

(As a side note, Gramma and I were just chatting about Legos, and wondered where they were made (they are made in Denmark), which led me to discover that there are free games on the Lego website. Emma loves them. )