When I say "Lolly wants to be a vet" I am NOT kidding!

We have a VERY serious play program here for prospective vet surgeons.  Here are some recent shots, she is operating on a very bad tooth problem that her pet toy snake developed.

Here's the vet in surgery.  Gloves and all. 

Sharp implements are required!

Complicated lego jaw restraint system, co-designed by DinnerDad.

You can see it's a delicate procedure....

Her tools all laid out on a "sterile surface".

The things she plays

Oh, the sweetness of the girl, and the cleverness of found item play.  Here, she's a little cat, hiding, in a three-sided house built out of camping floor, topped by an array of tea towels and dish cloths.  She has been playing next to me doing this, very seriously and with much fun, for 45 minutes as I get my new (borrowed) computer up to speed.

It's heart-melty stuff.

O. M. G.

About the cutest thing, evah.

The construction.

Right next door, and important collection of "shoes and toys and a shark, because that's what a cat needs, you know!"

I am just so in love with that child.

Bouncy friends, now with more babies!

When friends come over (to help with books), kids bounce (pants optional).

"I'm a cat, and the puppies are bouncing me!"

Kids and babes assemble and are super cute.

Smalls regard each other carefully.

"In case you were unaware, this toy is mine."

Sandpits are awesome.

Parks and Puppy Shoes

On Friday Lolly and I caught up with some friends at Queens Park, which has a fantabulous play ground [which would be made even more awesome by a fence, the eternal lament of the parent].  It was a cracker day, beautifully sunny. 

Lolly priming the pump for our friend, S.

It was the first time Lolly made a friend at the playground, and ran around with her, playing imaginative games.  It was lovely!  Naw, growing up...

Random friend!

Working hard to get water out of the pump.

And I can't resist, her latest insistence is an extra pair of shoes for her hands, all the better to be a puppy.  Here she is about to head off to the park.

Puppy Shoes

Honestly, the child can't really get any cuter.

Cyclone Hair!

Lolly's gorgeous curls get somewhat affected by the static from trampoline jumping. 

Her aunt Jubes calls this Cyclone Hair!  Its kind of awesome.

Little kitchen!

DinnerDad and Lolly made a play kitchen!  We scoured second-hand shops a few weekends ago and got a lovely little cabinet with shelves, which DinnerDad cut down and reconstructed a little, before painting and making a sink, adding a tap. [Excuse the dark phone shots, I'm super lazy with the good camera lately!).

Here is the finished product, the knobs and doors went back on yesterday.

How cute are the little utensils on the hooks!

We love it!!

More building!

Lolly is loving this stuff.  K'Nex seem to have a heap of good building toys, too, worth a look!  Her aunt sent the Zoo Buddies kit up for Lolly's birthday.  Lolly needs me to build the shapes, but has lots of fun helping.  The zoo set seems well worth it, to me!  The eyes are particularly popular!

More iPod/iPad Apps for Kids!

Lolly is now a month over 3 years old.  She's constantly changing her use of our iThings, she uses an iPod, and our iPads, mostly mine, which is now crammed so full of kids apps I can scarcely fit my own stuff on there.  Thank the iPad gods for folders!  Here's what she's chosing lately:

Nosy Crow's awesome retelling of the Three Little Pigs.  This is interactive fairy-tale fun at it's best.  Quirky art, great animation, and a fun story, you can tickle the pigs, there's a range of voice responses from every character, and lots of interactive bits as a natural part of the story.  The tale is re-told with a great sense of humour and fun.  Highly recommended!  Lolly and I are looking forward to the other apps Nosy Crow has slated for the rest of the year.  The one drawback I have is the usual gendered stuff, the "female" pig is a tad girly, and there's a couple of typical tropes there about how she can't build and likes to decorate.  Honestly, it's not that hard to leave this stuff out when you're building an app like this, it doesn't add anything.  *shakes fist*

Unfortunately, Lolly is more than obsessed with Outfit7's money pit Apps "Talking *Everything*" (Talking Hippo, Dino, Cat, Giraffe and so on ad nauseum).  Some are free but ask for in-App purchases.  I'm loving that Lolly's common chat now includes "we're not buying food for that Giraffe!"  My favourite of this lot is the one aimed more at kids, Talking Hippo. If you haven't had the joy that is the Talking-Shit Apps, they basically "listen" and repeat what they "hear" via the mic on the iThing, in a variety of amusing voices.  They have basic interaction, you can touch the screen and interact with the character, for example you can give the Hippo food, a dummy (sigh), a balloon, and make a butterfly appear.  This is totally awesome, really.  And Lolly LOVES them.  Can I repeat that again for effect: LOVES them.  I have come out out of the study to see her with her Talking Hippo propped up on the couch "watching" Octonauts on the TV with her.  Now that's a sight from *the future* - my kid interacting with her touch screen responsive talking virtual pet.


What I object to here are the in-App ads, cross advertising for the millions of other Talking-Shit apps, and on some of them, the violence. Talking T-Rex attacks another dinosaur, you can "hit" Talking Tomcat and knock him over, that kind of thing.  Arguably, most of these Talking-shit apps aren't for kids, but, let's be realistic, you advertise them inside the kids apps, most kids are going to want the talking dino/cat/whatever as well.  Lolly loves to open them up one after the other and listen to different voices.  I'd rather the kid rated versions stuck to advertising the kid rated apps, or that there was a parent-controlled way of setting preferences, or that you could choose to pay a dollar more to get a version that didn't have the cross-version ads in them.  But, I do think these are great Apps for kids.  Lolly still looks so amazed and full of wonder to hear the Hippo talking back to her, and she can chat to it for ages.  Worth a go, with the ad-based limitations in mind.

The final App for today is the fabulous and hilarious My Underwear.  Thumb Arcade have produced a great new app for kids with four games.  Adorable drawings and animation, and easy to control games, Lolly has been chosing this nearly every time since we got it a couple of weeks ago.  There's underwear matching, a memory match game, a paint-your-underwear paint game, and a hungry undie-eating monster game.  And the music is infectious and awesome.  DO give this one a go, it's worth it!  And I love that Thumb Arcade have given us all four in one game, rather than rorting parents for four separate games.  That is extra awesome. 


Oh okay one more, we have recently been crazy here about You Tube (can you spell, *Mummy learning parental controls frantically*?), and discovered Eric Herman's the Elephant Song.  Which has an App (basically just the song, a bit of interaction, and a puzzle game.  Worth it, though, this song is just great, and Herman's got heaps of other kids music that doesn't make me want to poke out my eye.  Try 'em out on YouTube.  The pirate song is a particular fave here, and the whole family is also dancing like they've got ants in their pants...

Enjoy!  And do let me know in comments if you try any of these out on your own iThing!

Toddler Work :D

Lolly has been enjoying lots of different activities lately, and being sick at home means we're here more and have more relaxed days of play and busy-ness.  Though sure, we watch a lot of telly when we're sick too :D.  I thought I'd do a post on what she's interested in at the moment. 

Here are her lounge room shelves as they were last week. 

Puzzles on the top (the one on the right is a 19 piece one of elephants that she needs help to do, but she loves it).  The second shelf has a basket of tiny books that she likes to carry round, take out, put back in, and get me to read to her.   In the middle in the round basket are several ribbons she was fascinated with, but hasn't touched since :p, next to the favourite library books, Pet Fish, Cats, and Dogs, which we read at least once every day.  On the bottom is her ocean animals number puzzle, a basket of beads for threading from the toy library, and a puzzle/sorting tray, also from the toy library.  We also have a work table out in the bay window, and that has had her sorting and water play on it.  Under the TV I've put her blocks and wooden matching box.

Lolly enjoys pouring water into things, and I have set her up with a few little jugs and attractive containers to help her express this.  It's in a carpeted area, but with a cloth down, and the carpet soon to be replaced, I haven't actually had many spills.  She's also enjoying picking flowers from our garden and arranging them in little vases at her worktable.  You can see the jugs in the marble photo below :D

I got two packs of glass marbles, purple and yellow, to do sorting, and then read on a Montessori blog about using them in suction cup bath stick-ons to do transfer activities, which Lolly LOVES.  She does them by hand at the moment, but is interested in using tongs, too, which is great for that pincer movement of hers :D  Here are the marbles for sorting, she loves to get lots of different spoons and tongs together at once while doing this.

Here she is with the suction cup duck, looking very pleased with herself.  You can see how I leave a cloth down on the table for water pouring. 

I've been going craft shop mad at the moment, we made it out to Spotlight as one of our first outings since recovering, and came home with pom poms, balloons, little stars, bells, a coffee scoop that looked great for spooning, a three part tray with a central well for sorting, colourful large buttons, pipe cleaners, oh, lots of things!  I have put most of it away for now, but we have small pom poms in two colours out for sorting, and paper beads too.  Here she is goin' crazy with spoons and scoops and marbles.  She loves to compare how each one works.

She has been very interested in our set of large blocks - which were a gift from her Aunt Strawberrypot when she was very little.  She builds them up high, but also makes houses out of them.  Often she will in line up the sides to be the same, which is interesting. Knocking them down is fun too :D

We're enjoying books at the moment, particularly "real" books about dogs, fish and cats we got from the excellent Ipswich library.  It's a Montessori thing that small children should read books that are about real life, not fantasy, and while we definitely don't follow this, I have noticed that the books she constantly requests are those about "real" things, facts and pictures about pet fish, puppies and things, and number books.  Though she also still likes Bears in the Night and Go Dog, Go! very much. 

She loves play dough, but has not been as intent on this as she was last month.  This is the set up I have at the moment, with some lovely cookie cutters.

She loves feeding the fish, which we do everyday.  We have three types of food and she asks for it in her palm and puts it in a pinch at a time.  We look at the fish and talk about them, she really loves it, and "let's feed the fish" can deflect much sick-y misery :D  We feed "cat-puss" and Pippin together, and water the plants.  She also helps with laundry, tidying up, and vacuuming and sweeping.  She often sits up at the bench to help "cutting" when one of us is cooking, she has her own little cutting board and uses a butter knife.  She's not expert yet, and I stick to soft foods to avoid too much frustration, bananas and avocados and so on.  She'd love to "cutting" everything but doesn't have the hold with one hand and saw with the other motion down yet, so carrots and other hard things are a little frustrating for her.  Here she is making herself a tuna sandwich :D

So that's a little glimpse of Lolly land, at age 2 and 5 months! 

At a friend's 3rd birthday, with cake!