hannah & daddy

hannah has a great daddy. he takes her to the park, to the store, and out for ice cream. he pretends to be the rabbit to her alice in wonderlad; the king mermaid to her "girl mermaid." one of their favorite things to do together is search youtube for videos. one really strange thing that hannah likes is america's funniest videos, so she loves youtube videos of people doing funny things. one of her favorites is charlie bit me. it's cute to watch her laugh at it, but i do hope this doesn't give her any ideas about biting other people! sometimes she will stick her finger in my mouth and say, "ouch charlie, that hurt" - in a british accent, of course.

bookworm

hannah loves reading. yesterday morning she dazzled me by reading a book that i read to her often - she flipped through the pages and read them one by one, getting almost every word right! we have read that book a million times so even though i was super impressed i knew she had some time to memorize it. but then later in the day she read a book to me that we've only read a few times, and the last time we read it was at least a week ago. but she remembered it, and again had almost every word down.

she moved over to her new "big girl room" a few weeks ago, and since then she's wanted to SLEEP with a book every night. at first i tried to discourage it because . . . well because books aren't cuddly, i guess. and did i mention she wanted to sleep with a whole stack of 'em? but after a few nights of arguing with her and trying to get her to snuggle with a soft bear instead i gave up and decided to let her sleep with one thin paperback book.

i found her in her new room a couple weeks ago reading to herself:

hannah's imagination

over the past 6 months or so hannah's imagination has exploded. she started maybe a year and a half ago with pretending to be a dog or a cat. now i think she's pretending to be something or someone every minute of every day! sometimes i will say something like, "let's brush your hair, hannah." and she will tell me, "i'm not hannah, i'm alice in wonderland." her favorite two characters by far are alice and the little mermaid, but she also pretends to be cinderella and "tommy." if you read the post below, you know tommy started off being what she called her little sister, but then tommy turned into a pretend baby she would carry around, and sometimes tommy is just someone else she pretends to be. it can be kind of embarrassing, like when tim took her to the park and she was playing with an older girl and all hannah would say is "i'm tommy" over and over and over again. she gets really into her roles and assigns us parts, too. now i don't know if all this pretending is normal for an almost 3 year old, but i'm going to say it's a sign of intelligence. ;) and maybe a future actress in the making. she also comes up with pretty ingenious uses for normal things around the house. i've seen a retractable tape measure become a fishing rod, a bracelet become a hula hoop for a doll, and a pair of shoes become dogs, and the shoelaces their leash.

here's hannah last month playing one of her favorite pretend games: tea party.