"Daniel Land"

Where a kid can play with his baby toys without a sibling stealing them!

We have a really long great room - half of it is a living room type area by the fire place.  The other half is this nebulous, undesignated area, which inevitably becomes a catch all for anything floating around the house that doesn't end up on my island.  

I tried to create a safe space for Daniel to play with his toys.  So far, so good.  Chris thinks it won't last long.  You never know!  If I were Daniel, I'd be thrilled to be in a place where I could have any toy I wanted without having to fight off much bigger kids!

I'm not sure what will eventually happen to this space.  I'd love to put a piano there, but that's a ways off.  For now, much like the rest of my house, it remains a kid space.

Progressions

I forget a lot of things about child development from kid to kid.  I shouldn't, since we're on the fourth, but I do.  When do they start using a spoon?  When should they be saying their sibling's names?  Daniel will only eat graham crackers with any consistency now, and while I know refusing food is normal, I can't remember if this is normal timing or if it's early?  I don't know.  And since we are on the fourth, I don't give it much thought, either.  One thing I do remember, however, is the books that I have been asked to read.  Into the thousands of times, some of them.  I know them by heart.  It's no longer a matter of memorization, I can say them while asleep, I'm quite sure.  Static things in my environment become the marker for the progression of a child, developmentally anyway.  One of those things in our house, which has become a static marker, is a series of books about a little gosling named Gossie and her friends.  Every single one of my kids has LOVED these books.  Daniel, in keeping, loves them now too.  It happened just a few weeks ago, but he fell in love with this little gosling just like the rest of them did.  If you want to check them out, it's the Gossie series by Oliver Dunrea.  I've heard there is a new book about a gosling named Gideon, but we don't have it yet.

I'm not sure if you can see, but the illustrations are really cute in these books.  

The flip side of forgetting about how Daniel will progress is watching carefully as Eli continues to push into uncharted territory.  This is far more terrifying than any mild concern I may be able to generate over Daniel's current developmental appropriateness.  Eli likes electronics.  Which is not a surprising thing, considering our culture and disturbing interconnected position with everybody else.  Eli just turned 7, and as a gift, received a Kindle.  It's a clever little device designed with parental controls and lots of access to anything at all he could ever think of (or accidentally stumble across).  Eek.  He's an incredibly responsible child, and he asks permission for EVERYTHING, so I don't worry to much about him.  But we are all learning right now, and it's not very comfortable.  For me, anyway.  He's loving it.