"Gimmie my ball!"

Amelia had a fun day today. This morning she impressed her mom, once again, by demonstrating a great command of modern technology. Amelia asked me to turn on the Christmas lights this morning, but I was in the middle of changing Diana at the time. I asked her to wait a minute while I finished what I was doing. When I looked up Amelia was in the hallway looking at the tree saying, "Look, tree, neat!" She had plugged the lights in without mommy's help. In fact, she plugged and unplugged the lights several times today. Looks like it's time for a long talk about using electricity safely.

I had a tough time getting Amelia to take a nap today. I finally persuaded her by promising her a trip to the small park across the street after she woke up. When she woke up we put on our shoes and went across the street to play. Most of the kids there were older boys, but Amelia still had fun. However, once it was time to leave Amelia spotted four older girls (maybe around eight years old) playing with a large, bouncy, pink ball. Amelia started after the ball saying, "Gimmie my ball!"

To me, it was funny. Amelia doesn't quite grasp the relationship between "my", "your", "theirs", etc. What she was really asking was to be able to play with the older girls' ball. They seemed to understand and would sometimes toss the ball gently and low to the ground so that Amelia could catch it. Amelia would then throw the ball with all her might (about two feet) into another girl's hands. I was really happy to see her having fun with some of the neighborhood girls and look forward to a time when she can play with other girls her same age.

Lisa