The Number Field

It's been too long since my last post, but after I got back from last week's High Adventure trip, I had to re-immerse myself in dissertation writing, and I'm only now taking a brief breath of air. I have a backlog of several posts, but I'll start with this one.

Elena has learned to be very helpful around the house. At the very least, she tries to help, and sometimes she succeeds. The best example is that after we change her diaper and roll it up, she likes to take it and deposit it in the diaper pail. This makes her so happy that she even claps for herself after dropping it in.

When it's time to take the diapers out to the dumpster, she likes to participate too. Often when I arrive home in the evening, Jenny asks me and Elena to take the trash out and check the mail. Elena usually likes to carry some of the trash and throw it into the dumpster, and when we pick up the mail she feels left out unless I give her something to carry back to the apartment.

Elena tries to help out at the grocery store too, but sometimes does more harm than good. She doesn't know what's on the shopping list, so she tries to grab everything from the shelves. Jenny does a good job managing that challenge, and can usually appease her by giving her one or two items to examine. At checkout time, Elena is fascinated by the conveyor belt and loves to put things on it.

The kitchen will probably become a future area of focus, but Elena isn't yet old enough to understand how she can help. She knows that the silverware is supposed to go from the dishwasher to the drawer, but she doesn't know the difference between clean and dirty, and while she can reach into the drawer, she's not tall enough to see inside it. The other day Jenny let her "wash some dishes," but she just ended up playing with water in the sink. Jenny took a cute video:

Also, check out all the recent uploads to my flickr account .