Inventing Croquet

Isabelle is starting to play more, and sometimes she invents her own games. A few days ago, I was watching her as I was doing chores around the house, and she was using a plastic hammer to hit a ball around the livingroom. Neither Robert nor I had showed her this, she just made it up on her own. It's like she was creating croquet.

Anything new in the house that she can put on the floor, she checks for slideability. It as though she lives to body surf around the house on stuff that slides. Last night I have her the plastic insert from an ornament box, and she went sliding around the living room on it. There could be boogie boarding in her future.

Isabelle has been to the top of the stairs several times, and practices on the two stairs below the child gate going up and down them. Once she's at the top of the stairs, she hasn't gotten the idea that she needs to turn around to come down, so she just sits at the top, puts her hand on the edge a coupble of times, and looks down, then either cries or finds something to do at the top. Once I turn her around so she's backwards, she's fine going down.