Keddiebears: Joshua discovers a loophole

As anyone who's been to our home (or seen photos taken in our apartment!) would know, we're a book-loving family. We have this awesome wall of bookcases in our open floor plan living/dining room, with books jam-packed on the shelves all the way along the wall. And, well, they're colorful, and bright, and make a really satisfying thwack when they hit the floor... So one of the biggest temptations in Joshua's young life is the desire to toddle up to the bookshelves and FLING books onto the floor.

We've had some success in the last couple weeks, though, at teaching him not to do that. He would run up to the books, fling one down, and we would say "noooo, Joshua, leave the books alone!" Then we would promptly pick him up and put him in his playpen. It's more of a distraction than anything else -- his music-making toys are in there, so we were using the pen as a diversionary tactic. But our willful little guy did NOT like being removed unceremoniously from the books, and would protest loudly when we put him there.

It was fascinating watching him learn the cause and effect of it all, though. After just a couple days of consistent playpenning, we noticed a few changes. Joshua would toddle up to the books, stop short for a moment, look around at us, then fling the book down and then run away as fast as he could. He clearly knew what he was doing. :) Then about a week later, the cutest thing happened -- he stopped at the books, and instead of flinging any of them to the floor, he started lovingly stroking the spines, saying "nooooo, nooooo..." I guess he picked up on what we were saying to him!

It looks like he's finally learned to not throw any books to the floor now. But what's really interesting is watching him test the limits of this rule. We do allow him to play with our DVDs (none of which we watch these days, anyways, thanks to internet streaming!). And of course he's allowed to play with all of his own toys. So this is what he's taken to doing lately: