The Number Field

Sometimes Elena doesn't like the idea of having her diaper changed, and puts up some resistance when we put her on the changing table. If we can just distract her for a moment, she calms down and cheers up. When both Jenny and I are available, sometimes we'll team up--one will work on the diaper while the other distracts her.

While doing this a few days ago, I picked up three little toys that were lying around and started to juggle them. I'm not a great juggler, so I dropped them pretty quickly, but Elena loved it. Last night Jenny went to a meeting and left us alone for some daddy-baby time. While we were playing, she handed me a few of her toys then started shaking her hands up and down. It took me a minute, but I realized she was asking me to juggle. She repeated her request several times over the course of the evening. One inconsistency was the number of things she wanted me to juggle--sometimes she handed me just one toy, other times it would be six or seven.

Whenever Jenny and Elena go somewhere in the car, on their way out the door Jenny tells Elena to pick out a toy to play with in her car seat. Jenny says that she picks out something different every time, often a toy that she doesn't play with at home. The other day I got to observe this interaction for the first time. Elena grabbed her floppy hat, something that, like Jenny said, she rarely wears around the house.

I've written before about how much Elena likes necklaces. She also likes to wear other things as if they were necklaces. We'll probably have more pictures to add to this series in the future.