But Wait, There's More...

More emergings, that is.

Joy has become much more attuned to greetings and goodbyes. The high-five came about in the fall, I believe, and has been a lovely hook upon which to hang interaction at Sunday school and kindergarten practice. What's new, though, is a level of engagement and interaction, plus new signals. Joy has re-learned the bye-bye wave! And she also does a fun new greeting, where she gives a huge grin and stretches out a pointer finger. Sort of like in the movie E.T., if I'm not dating myself too badly here!

Another re-emergence is the "Clap, clap, uh-oh!" game. I don't remember when we first invented this -- I think it was a couple of years ago. It's a two-person game, facing each other, Person 1 is set to clap their hands and Person 2's hands are on the outside. Person 2 "makes" Person 1 clap hands, several times in a row. The soundtrack is "Clap... clap... clap..." and then Person 2 makes Person 1's hands miss and cross instead of clapping, and the vocalization is a big giggly "UH-OH!" Joy is not only willing to play the game again, she can be either Person 1 or 2. And she is willing to supply the "uh-oh" herself more often than not. AND, on Sunday when I was on nursery duty at church with her, I caught her in a quiet moment playing the game with herself. And she did the motions and said "cah, cah, uh-oh!" All on her own.

She's getting good at opening the car door from the outside and getting all the way in, with our Honda Fit at least.

She's mastering the "flip trick" for putting on her coat.

This morning she was playing in the kiddie area at the carshop while we were getting an oil change, and her shoe came off. This is a girl who, when her boot pulls off in the snow, can walk for several steps before anyone notices that the boot has gone... she not only noticed the shoe right away, but picked it up, then on voice-prompt brought it over to me. And as we were putting in on, she said "ahhhhn" (a nasal-sounding, French-like pronunciation that had an implied "n" rather than an American "n" but still!)

And just so as not to ignore Miss Rose, who is doing some pretty amazing things herself: she drew a picture last October for a contest at Ask magazine, where they were supposed to submit ideas to scare monsters away. Her submission was selected and published in the March issue!

Her caption: "This monster has electric snakes coming out of his head. He will scare ghouls out of their pants!"

Boo!