'Elevator going up...'

Spoke to one of Izzy's nursery girls today, who was telling me about the observations her mom and colleague have made of Izz for a study she's doing for her Open University degree. Apparently Izzy is a rich source of amusing material for such things. 

Becky said she's quite a nice kid to look after in that she plays by herself most of the time and only comes to you when she needs something. The nursery needs to make three observations of each child a day apparently (yikes, poor them!) and she said they can usually count on Izz for a lot of imaginative play.

Her mom Liz did tell me a while back about some machine she said she'd made, a 'hurter'. And what does it do, Liz asked, expecting it to zap baddies or something. 

'When someone is hurt, you put the machine on them and it tells you where it hurts and then it makes them better,' the young miss said. 

Izzy is quite fond of the show Handy Manny and has lately started playing a lot more with the tool kit we bought her nearly a year ago. Sadly its many nails, nuts and bolts are all scattered around her toy boxes but she will quite happily use the tools still available to 'fix' something if you ask her to. 

So I'm starting to realise that imaginative play is something she really quite likes. This weekend, on declining her offer to jump rope with her (I must get round to making her a rubberband skipping rope and teaching her the old zero-dot and high jump games), I made her soft toys jump over instead and this then happily spun into a game of them doing different jumps at different heights for half an hour. 

Yesterday I saw her wrapping herself up in the curtains by the French windows and muttering to herself. So I tiptoed up to eavesdrop. She was going, with perfect, measured tones:

'Doors closing. 

Elevator going up. 

Doors opening. 

Elevator going down.'

Sulks

She's taken to these in the same way Hui Li used to ages ago. When ticked off with me, she crosses her arms, humphs and closes eyes. I was so tickled when this happened on the weekend I asked Alex to get the camera. And then we teased her.

'Has Izzy gone to sleep? Hey, what's going on? How come your eyes are shut? Are you sleeping?'

She only cracked open one eye long enough to register our amusement and angrily shook her head, before stalking off to her play area, where she stayed muttering to herself for a good 20 minutes or so. 

I quite like these sulks.