Playtime with Kate

Last night, Kate threw an absolute fit when we said she could not watch any more "Abby-Elmo" (i.e. Sesame Street of any kind, even things without those two favorite characters) for the evening. She literally screamed "I wanna watch Abby-Elmo!" over and over for about twenty minutes. Matt and I contemplated taking a video of her to send to PBS, saying "see what you've done?!" 

She really, really loves Sesame Street, and we have several DVDs in addition to watching short clips on sesamestreet.org. But when Kate's not watching or begging to watch Sesame Street, she has other, more enriching hobbies we can indulge. 

Like painting...

I suspect she enjoys the mess-making more than the actual creative expression, but we definitely had fun with some new watercolors and markers we got when shopping for this year's school supplies (which consisted of crayons, markers, and a pencil box). She had to try all the colors, and did not want to be slowed down by rinsing the brush between colors.

Kate likes to practice cutting and pasting. She likes for me to cut out shapes from colored paper and she'll glue them to another paper. Often, when we color, she's more project manager than artist, asking me to write or draw various things for her. "Write my name!" she'll beg, and we'll spell different words. This morning, she had me draw her, me, and Daddy (all wearing purple)... and the cows from her Little People Farm.

She likes playing with the farm in general, but as the cows are the only animal she has multiple of, she likes to carry them around with her. Not sure why. They came outside with us this evening and rode in the baby swing while she played on the swingset. 

She's also been having me draw Dolly over and over (her little plush baby that she got when she was born) and then as Dolly sat and watched us draw other things, Kate occasionally turns the paper toward Dolly and says, "See, Dolly? Mommy, Daddy, Kate!" (or whatever we were drawing). She did that when we were reading a book with another baby doll (whom she has named "Sister") recently, making sure I angle the book so the baby can "see." I imagine she'll do that with her baby sister too :0) 

We still enjoy old favorites like play food and blocks too. This morning we "shopped" around the living room for fruit and other things arranged on the furniture. Then we played with blocks for a good long while. Kate is very into matching colors now, such as when I'm wearing a green shirt and she'll hold up a piece of play broccoli to show me how they match. So, a lot of the block playing now is grouping all the blue blocks, all the orange blocks, etc. I like to stack blocks into towers, but apparently I do it wrong, since she is often telling me, "No, Mommy!" 

And finally, the newest (coolest, in my mind) development is Kate's ability to use her imagination. She's started wanting to play pretend without any props, and it's so fun to see what she comes up with. The two main games are eating--we pluck food from a tree or a shelf, prepare it, and eat it--and balloons--we grab the strings of helium balloons, I tie them to her wrist or ankle, she shouts "oh no! it floated away!" and we try to catch it before it flies too far away. (I don't know why I can never tie those imaginary strings tight enough! :0) Here's Kate trying to catch a balloon that floated away...

What kind of games do your kids like to play?