Carmen's Pretend Play

I've been kind of sick for the past few days (sore throat/headache/sneezing/body aches and chills/etc) so I've just wanted to sit on the couch and cross-stitch.  Lucky for me, Carmen does a pretty good job of entertaining herself.

Today, I was sitting on the couch and she started dragging around the changing pad.  I saw her lay down across it sideways, pull a wipe out of the pouch, and wipe her stomach with the wipe while trying to stick it down her diaper.

... Pretending to change your own diaper, honey?

I checked her, and she's clean!  This is hilarious!!!

She also likes to read books.  Not picture kid books - real books, like Harry Potter and Freakonomics.  She points to something big and in hardcover and asks, "Book?" so I hand it to her and she starts to flip through it.  Yesterday, she wasn't too interested in playing in Nursery all by herself, so we spent the last hour sitting quietly in the chapel while I cross stitched and she flipped through the hymn book while eating sweet potato-flavored Gerber puffs.

Hey, whatever works, right?


This morning, she woke up shortly before Torrey left for the bus stop.  As Torrey was getting ready to head out the door, she asked Carmen for hugs or kisses goodbye, which Carmen refused, but then Torrey called out, "Bye, Kamis!  Bye, Carmen!" as she was leaving, and Carmen immediately started crying and running towards the stairs saying, "No, no!  TOYYYYYY!!!  TOOOOOOYYYYYYYYY!"

And while we were walking around the church yesterday after Nursery, we came across this poster with a bunch of pictures from some park volunteer activity thing.  Dad was in one of the photos, and Carmen found it and pointed to Dad and said, "Papa!" (her word for "grandpa")  I walked her over to the photo directory of the young women and young men, and she said, "Toy!" and pointed to Torrey's picture.  She also pointed out Logan's picture, but she doesn't say his name yet.  She's got about a week left to do it!

Anywho.

This stage is really delightful.  She's grown up SO MUCH in the past month - I totally see why 18 months is Nursery age.