Delaney and her dolls
Delaney has a special relationship with her “babies.” She loves them. Seriously…LOVES them. I have never seen a child so obsessed with her babies. She keeps them on a good schedule, putting them to sleep in the oddest, yet protected, places. And she’s a total lactivist (but I suppose the fact that we have NO bottles in this house hinders a formula-fed child); she nurses them regularly. Her two favorite dolls are Tika (the current favorite) and Neema. They are both wretched, plastic-headed dolls. We tried to help her fall in love with a cloth, Waldorf-style doll, but my mother-in-law beat us to the punch, offering her a plastic-headed doll instead. It was love at first sight.
She talks about them, too. I don’t know how normal this is… She’ll say, “When Tika grows up and gets real, she will ____[insert something silly here]_________.” She talks about them “getting real” often. She will say, “Tika told me____” or “Neema needs that” a lot - they do come up quite a bit in conversation. Um…is this normal?
Ironically, Colin could care less. Delaney wants to play with dolls ALL THE TIME and Colin will sometimes go along with it, but not necessarily on her terms. Throwing dolls down the stairs or seeing how fast they will fall remain on the top ten list of favorite Colin activities. She has been sharing Neema with Colin; he’ll play with her a bit, mostly just holding her while Ms. Bossy gives him this instruction and that instruction, and rarely actually heeding her instructions.
July 23rd, 2008 at 1:37 pm
That sounds about right
Hannah hasn’t gotten obsessed with dolls, but she had some imaginary friends when she was Delaney’s age (one was named Khaki, and I can’t remember the other weird name). She told us all sorts of strange things about her friends… Khaki lived in a pink house in Tulsa, etc. Elijah is now at the imaginary friend stage, and he has at least a dozen!! They have names like Cupper, Dupper, Cupase, Dupase, Molly’s Grandpa, etc, lol. Elijah is no better at following Miss Bossy either… makes for interesting times, and lots of screaming. Apparently boys like to THROW things… anything they can. Oh, and they like to stand on things. Elijah will stand on any toy or whatnot that is on the floor. I was told by a mother of 3 boys that that was a “boy thing” and I should just get used to it 
July 28th, 2008 at 9:01 am
The talking about “getting real” seems normal. Well, normal-ish. (Kidding!) Eric talks a lot about himself this way. My favorite is when he talks about someday when he “is a baby again and lives in a belly”. At 36 pounds, yeah, don’t see THAT happening.
My boys are throwers and stand on everything, too. Normal?