The Number Field

For the past week or two, Elena has been pointing at everything. For instance, at breakfast on Sunday, I was trying to feed her one thing, but she really wanted something else: more pancakes. She made the sign for "more," and I said that I had given her more and she wasn't eating it. She responded by pointing at the pancakes and then making the "more" sign. After that, I couldn't do anything but give her the pancakes.

Jenny told me that this morning she was reading on the couch while Elena played with her toys. When Elena noticed what Jenny was doing, she rambled off to her bedroom and returned with a book. Jenny helped her up onto the couch and Elena settled into a seated position next to her; they both had their books open. After just a moment, Elena started pointing at Jenny's book then back at her own. Jenny thought that Elena wanted to be read to out loud, but Elena didn't seem to want that. Jenny still can't figure out exactly what Elena wanted, but our current best guess is that Elena just wanted to point out the fact that she and mommy were engaged in the same activity. Any thoughts?

This evening Jenny fixed a wonderful dinner with a main course of broiled pork chops. Our small apartment doesn't have the greatest ventilation, but our smoke detectors are top notch. As a result, when the pork chops came out of the oven a smoke detector started beeping, even though there was no visible smoke and almost no smell. We've been through this before, and the quickest solution is to remove smoke detector from the wall and put it on the ground for just a minute until the smoke dissipates.

While the smoke detector was on the ground, Elena crawled right over, picked it up and started to examine it. When she noticed that she had my attention, she started to point at the wall. I asked her to come back to the front room, but she wouldn't budge. I eventually went over to her and she handed it to me. I decided that enough time had passed for the smoke to dissipate, and reattached the detector to its mounting bracket. With that done, Elena happily returned to playing with her toys.

I have no idea why Elena would be so attracted to the smoke detector, or how she knows that it's supposed to go on the wall. I don't think that she saw me take it down. Somehow she knew that something was up, and she wouldn't give it up until I put things back in their rightful state. She's a good little fire marshal, keeping all of us safe.