1. A few months ago she started this habit of taking all of the ABC blocks and moving them to her reading chair in the play room. It took her forever to diligently carry each block from its storage bin to her chair across the room, but she remained devoted until that last block was safe with the others. When all the blocks had successfully been moved, she abandoned them and started playing with something new.
2. Then it was books. She could not ever just take one book from the bookshelf in her room. She needed all thirty books, so she could effectively decide which one she should select for her bedtime story. She piled them up and toted them off to another spot in her room. Thank goodness, the “Only One Book at a Time” rule has stuck, and we no longer have to replace dozens of books each night before bed. When she wouldn’t nap, I reluctantly allowed her a few books in her bed so that she would settle down and have some quiet time even if she didn’t sleep. Every day, after she decides she is finished reading and ready to sleep (even if it’s only for 20 minutes), she gathers all of her books in a heap, then falls asleep laying on top of them, like a mother hen sitting on top of her eggs, waiting for them to hatch.
3. She has always been fascinated with stuffed animals. She can’t ever just cart around one. She needs all of them at the same time. She gets so frustrated when she can’t slide down the stairs while holding three of her “friends.” That’s what brought about the “Leave the Friends in the Bed” rule. We are still diligently trying to implement that one.
4. At Christmas, when Jake got a tool bench from Auntie Bri and Uncle Dave, Lilly drove me absolutely crazy taking every screw and nail from the tool bench and stuffing them into the microwave in their play kitchen. Every single morning, it was the first thing she did. One by one, she would take all of them from the place they belonged to a new and better place: the microwave. I would try to put them back and she would get so mad at me, so finally I decided that Jake’s tool bench needed to be moved to another room away from their kitchen. So far, she has not come up with a new home for Jake’s hardware since “The Relocation.”
5. Lilly loves when I fold clothes, which usually involves at least five loads of laundry. Small confession: I HATE doing laundry. It’s not the washing/drying part; it’s the folding. So I do the washing and the drying, (OK the machines in the laundry room do that part) and then five (or more) loads of laundry sit in the laundry room until I can’t stand looking at them anymore and decide to fold them. I share all of this to explain why there are always two laundry baskets present when folding occurs. Lilly is thrilled to take each piece of laundry from one basket and move it to the other basket. The only time this becomes a problem is when the article of clothing she decides to transport has already been folded!
6. Another favorite hobby of Lilly’s is coloring. When she sits down to create a beautiful piece of art, she is adamant about having every single crayon within her reach. Sometimes, she will scoot the pile of bright colors closer to her, just in case I decide to pick them up before she can save them. She does the same thing outside with chalk. She is not happy with one piece; she has to have every single one of them laid out in front of her. At least she hasn’t started hiding the chalk in the bushes… yet.
7. This week, she’s on to something new. For three days now, I’ve watched her gather every single piece of play food, from pizza to broccoli, and take it from the kitchen area to the little red wagon. I’ve posted plenty of stories about the little red wagon, so if you know my child, you know what’s coming next. After all the food had been dumped into the wagon, she then hopped in on top of the food. Now I’m not sure why she prefers to sit on hard, plastic food, but yesterday Jake pulled her all over the house as she sat perched on top of her stockpile of food.
Strange habit? Harmless quirk? Early signs of hoarding? I'm not sure. I have to admit I do see a pattern, but most of these instances can be categorized as merely "rearranging" or "gathering."
However, the following definition makes me a bit uneasy:
hoard- to accumulate for preservation, future use, etc., in a hidden or carefully guarded place
I'm still sticking with innocent quirkiness!
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