Cast & Crew: The New Team

This post was written in February 2012, but for some reason, never published. I suspect it is unfinished, but I have just written a Cast & Crew post about Adam's 13-month favourites and it seems a pity to waste this. So here is Emily's. Tomorrow, Adam's.


Some of you may remember my original Cast & Crew post back in September. I really enjoyed putting that together and recently enjoyed reading through it (and it seemed to be enjoyed by a few of you too!). Six months later, now aged 13 months, Emily has changed a lot. Even looking at that picture of her in September's post feels like I'm looking at an entirely different child! Time for an update!


Fisher Price Activity Table
All I knew when we decided to buy an activity table was that I didn't want to get the Leapfrog one. Nothing against Leapfrog in the least - we own a good amount of their 0-24 months range! - but I've had enough of Leapfrog tunes. We needed fresh sounds. If not for Emily, then for me. So we found this one, it's very colourful and a little bit different from all the others and we went for it. No regrets: Emily loves having something she can play with while standing up, as well as another thing to use to pull herself up with. And best of all, she loves the songs (or so her swaying bottom tells me)!



Megabloks
She has two bags of these, one large, one small. When she wants to play, she'll hand me the small bag to unzip. And then it begins. She'll sit there taking each piece out and flinging it somewhere around her. If two blocks are joined, she will take them apart and fling separately. The extent to which these blocks are used for building things at this point is this: I build, she destroys. However I have noticed that over the last couple of days she has taken a certain interest in the way I build things, just this morning she was even handing me blocks to add on to my towers. Either way, she spends ages happily entertained by these blocks, and I have no doubt that they will continue to entertain for months to come once she finally works out what they're actually for.




Bop and Go Alien
Oh this alien! Both Emily and Gabriella own one and he is loved equally by them both. You press his head down and off he goes, sliding around, making alien noises and lighting up. He is meant to encourage babies to crawl and move after him. Emily loves hitting his head to get him to make his funny sounds over and over. She has now even realised that he doesn't work on carpet as well as on the floor. Fantastic fun.




Baby Picture Books!
They tell us that babies love looking at pictures of other babies and that's all well and good, but just watching her scan her bookshelf specifically for these three books is amazing. They are almost always the first she'll choose, she recognises them by their (well-creased) spines. Then she'll sit herself down and smile at the babies and talk to them. I'd recommend these - or any books with big, clear pictures of babies' faces - to anyone.




Happyland Family
They get chewed, poked and investigated, banged against each other and hidden under the sofa (of course). But they'll go far together!
(Note from 2014: Her love for her "people" is s till going strong!)

Again, the list could go on and on really. Those stacking cups are certainly moving up in her list of favourites!