Pictures

I'm really baffled by how Tess responds to pictures and drawings. She treats them like they are real, and she wants them to pop off the page. Just now she opened a book with a drawing of a dog licking a man affectionately. It made her cry because she wanted that dog to lick her. She stood there grabbing at the picture, pointing it out to me, asking me for the dog. One time she was inconsolable because she couldn't get a piece of cake out of a book.

She will also carry pictures around as if they were real things. Someone sent us a card with a picture of a dog on it in September. She still has that card! It's been chewed around all of the edges, but she doesn't lose it. It floats around with her toys, and this week she insisted that we take it to the park. She walks around carrying it, talking to the dog.

A couple of days ago Tess noticed a small image of a book she likes on the back of another book. (The Sandra Boynton books promote other books on the back.) She was reading Moo, Baa and saw the picture of Blue Hat, Green Hat and came to me whining for the book. It's a book we have, so I went and found it in another room and brought it to her. When I handed it to her, she looked at it for a bit. Then she looked back at the small image of the book, and back at the book, and back at the image, and back at the book. Finally she reached out and took the book. It was as if she was amazed that her small image wasn't the actual thing. Or she wondered how I made the book appear. I'm not sure, but it tickled me.