Not In Kansas Anymore (NIKA)

A new stage?

Dorothy has developed a number of new behaviors very recently (like in the past week). She's suddenly being more affectionate with her teddy bears, carrying them around and hugging them (and playing with them with Daddy). She will stop playing to come find us and spontaneously hug us. And when we tell her it's time to stop playing (e.g., because it's bathtime or time to come home from daycare), she will throw a fit, yelling "no, no!" and trying to push our faces away when we pick her up.

While we were giving her her bath this evening, Tom was saying that it seemed like she was in some kind of phase, but we couldn't quite put our finger on what it was. Then I realized a common theme - I think she's suddenly realized that she can consciously express her emotions.

We've usually been able to tell what she thinks for quite a while, but I think it's been more that we're able to read her reflexive signals. But now I think she's doing it with awareness of what she's doing, and so she can do more complicated things to express how she's feeling. If she was feeling happy and we happened to be holding her before, she might give us a hug or a snuggle, but now she can think that she wants to hug Mommy, come find me, and hug my knees until I pick her up. Or when I come to get her at daycare while she's playing, she could say, "no, no" before, but she wouldn't scream it while pushing on my face and trying to squirm out of my arms, and then pout in the car seat and refuse to hold a book or a toy. (That lasted until I'd been on the road for two minutes - then she started having fun playing with the Velcro on her shoes.) When she didn't want to stop playing with her doll furniture at bathtime tonight, I was able to "negotiate" by asking if she'd like to take the toy bathtub with her, and avert the screaming meltdown we had last night. (She had lots of fun putting the toy people in the toy bathtub and filling it with water while she was standing in the real bathtub).

Dorothy's transformation from a baby with little or no real capability for thought into a "real person" isn't a smooth and linear process - there are fits and jumps along the way, sometimes taking one step back for every two steps forward. Sometimes it's frustrating and infuriating, especially when my old strategies for relating to her stop working, and I have to go back and figure out what's going on in her mind. But it's probably the most fascinating thing I've ever watched, and I can't wait to see what happens next.