dynamic elf

I've been waiting quietly for a long time for her to start pretending stuff, and without me noticing, she has slid slowly from having a very silly sense of humor into outright make-believe. For a little while now, she's been taking toys (teddy bears, rubber frogs, bars of soap) and putting them "to bed". She'll first put it in a nice cozy place, maybe under a towel or on a bed or in the small dark place between the top of a piano bench and the bottom of a piano, say "byebye!" to it, and then turn to me and sign something like [FROG] [BED] *point*! She uses the same sign for bed and sleep and nap and tired, so it's hard to know precisely what she's telling me except that any interpretation clearly involves sleeping plastic frogs.

She's also suddenly rocking the language, making lots of jumbles of signs and spoken words and repeating everything we say. She always seems to be able to pick the interesting noun out of the sentence and repeat it, even if it was buried in the middle of what was just said. It's really interesting to watch, even though it's presumably perfectly normal. Also, it's adorable to hear her say "penguin" or "drool" or whatever.

Oh! And apparently she hates cilantro! It makes her make a really sad face and then give sad chokey noises. This from a girl who voluntarily licks soap.