I don’t know why this always amazes me, but Jelly saw the dollhouse and knew exactly what to do with it. By that, I mean she played with it completely appropriately. She wasn’t rearranging furniture or decorating the walls, but she was really excited about the house and the doll family that goes with it. But she didn’t climb on it, take it apart, or put the pieces in her mouth. In fact, the second thing she did was take “the Daddy” and had him climb “up up up” the stairs. (The first thing she did was take the Cabbage Patch Doll she was already holding and put her in the house. Clearly, we need to work on her sense of scale.)
When I dropped Moe off at school that morning, I mentioned to his teacher that we got the dollhouse. She said “it’s interesting to see ‘true’ play, isn’t it? It starts so early.” Those words, so true and obvious, really struck me.
Jelly’s second birthday was an emotional one for me. I assumed that this was because it marked the end of her baby-hood. She’s growing so fast, and doing amazing things every day. But as she grows, she also shines a spotlight on Moe’s delays. I’m quite aware of the ever-growing list of things Moe isn’t doing, but seeing things like “pretend play” in action makes this list real. We still have so far to go.
Here’s a short video of Jelly playing. The first part is a little bit of the dollhouse. the second half is Jelly having one of the dolls do the Hokey Pokey. She's really cute, but I will say that in the cuteness department, Moe is keeping up just fine.
