Winging It

Samantha likes to sit on my lap and look at my laptop. Until recently, she's liked watching some educational music videos, but lately she's been fixating on looking at our photos. Today she got really picky about the photos and only wanted to go through the ones of her at the pool, the beach, and the splash pad over and over. Then it got to be the just the pictures where she's wearing her 'flag' swimsuit. Transitioning to another activity got tears each time.

Finally a light bulb lit up in mommy's head. "Sam, do you want to put on your swimsuit?" Instantly her big green eyes were riveted on mine and she frantically signed 'please'..or in actuality 'please, please, please, please'.

One problem: a thunderstorm was headed our way. Think fast, mommy. I grabbed her bucket, shovel and a toy fish, telling Sam we were going to have a fun water adventure. I put on her suit and filled up the tub. She was thrilled to get to splash and play with her pool toys and wear her swimsuit. I squirted her with the shower to pretend we were at the splash pad.

Great fun, and a new activity to add to the rainy day activity repertoire. Wish I could be this good at winging it all the time.

Fisher Price Little People Animals

Meet some of my new best friends. These cute little critters keep my daughter entertain in quite a wide variety of ways. While a 16-month old doesn't have the pretending ability that an older toddler has to play with Little People animals in the context of their plastic farm, zoo or Noah's ark, she certainly knows how to get the most fun out of them that she can.

Fisher Price did a great job making these animals adorable and sturdy enough to take a beating from a little kid's teeth, being run over by plastic vehicles and from being projectiles. Samantha loves lining up her animals on the coffee table and knocking them off with glee. Lest you think she's only out to give them hard knocks, her polar bear and elephant often have Cheerios and water 'shared' with them. Ever the faithful zookeeper, Sam often busies herself 'feeding' her animals from the plastic bucket of fish that came with her Fisher Price zoo set.

For a child beginning to talk, the Little People animals are a great springboard for learning the names of animals as well as their sounds. One other delightful pastime we found for parent-child play is spinning several animals together, which results in an eruption of giggles from Samantha.
You should try it sometime. The video is a sample of what I mean. She'd already been laughing for several minutes before I got out the camera to record it.



Thank you, Fisher Price for creating Little People animals. I'm sure we'll find even more fun to be had with them as our daughter grows.