growing up

Over the last six months or so Rachel has become so much better at entertaining herself.  I can't even explain how nice it is.  That doesn't mean that she doesn't constantly ask for me to play with her....she does.  But more often than not I can tell her that Mommy's busy with X, Y, or Z, and sometimes will give her a suggestion of something she could do, and she's off, and perfectly content to play by herself. 

I think part of it is training and part of it is just age--she's growing up.  Since she was about 6 months old she's had independent play time every day.  It started out in her pack and play every morning while I would take a shower.  She hated it at first, and it would only last for 15 minutes or so and she'd cry a majority of that time, but gradually she got used to it, the time got longer, and she learned to enjoy it.  I've always put a CD on for her and she's had plenty of toys to play with and books to look at.  As she got older and too big for a play pen, she graduated from play pen time to room time.  Now she spends about an hour each morning in her room playing (usually with her princess polly pocket dolls or my old Strawberry Shortcake dolls, or sometimes looking at books).  During this time I take a shower, get dressed, clean up my room, get laundry started, put clothes away, put dinner in the crock pot, or some other assortment of tasks that need to get done.  She never complains about it--she loves it!  This used to be the only independent play time she'd willingly do, but now that she's older she'll just start playing by herself at other times during the day.  This morning, for instance, she has played with lego (part of the time I had to help because lego is a very frustrating activity to her all by herself--she has a hard time getting the pieces apart and making them look like she wants them to look, unless she's just building a tower!), colored a princess picture, played with her train table, had a circus with her little people animals, and played "Princess Flower Girl Rachel" (which consists of her dressing up in a princess dress and pretending she's a flower girl, though the only way she knows what a flower girl is is from a Babar book we once had out of the library months ago!).  Sometimes she does some of these simultaneously (like wearing her princess dress and reinacting "The Little Engine that Could" on her train table, which is what she's doing right now as I type this!).  ***

Now we're entering a new phase of life.  We finally moved her to her big girl room this weekend (it still needs some work, so pictures will be coming eventually, but it's looking good so far) and the room is huge--big enough for lots and lots of her toys.  Our dining room has served as her playroom for the first (almost) four years of her life, and it still will be, but many of the toys that filled it are now in her new room, making room for the baby swing and changing table which need to come up out of the basement for a new little girl who will soon be making her appearance in our family.  So the new phase is now being able to say, "Rachel, go play in your room!"  I'm anxious to see how this phase goes.  She's thrilled about it now.  Hopefully it will stay this way.

This independence she's learned is both good and bad.  Good because it allows me to get things done.  Good because she's developed quite an imagination and loves coming up with scenarios for what's going on with the princesses or trains or whatever she happens to be playing with at the moment.  Bad because she has learned to be the one in control when she plays, and always expects things to work that way.  This becomes a problem at school when she's playing with other kids.  If the other kids don't want to play the way she is playing, she'll just play by herself.  She doesn't get upset (usually)...just prefers to go do things her own way.  This is the whole reason we sent her to school in the first place--to learn to socialize and interact well with other children.  And she is learning...her teacher says she's improved a lot since the beginning of the year, but she still has a way to go.  Hopefully having her in school three mornings next year will help her learn these skills even better.

All that to say, my little girl is growing up.  I can't believe she's almost four.  That just sounds so old.  She's starting to give up her naptime (NOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!).  I'm still in denial about that one and still put her in bed every afternoon, but she's only sleeping about half the days right now.  We'll see if with the time change next weekend she'll need the extra sleep again.   I can't believe that this time next year I'll be registering her for kindergarten.  I can't think about that yet.  I just want to bottle her up like this--her joy and enthusiasm and wacky imagination--and savor it forever.


***I should explain that I wrote part of this much earlier in the week.  She wasn't playing with her train table at 9 pm when I published this--she's sleeping in her big girl room at the moment.