Emma's Paranoia and Mary's persistence

As I mentioned before, little 9 month old Mary has begun to crawl. Since her first shaky start she has become completely mobile and pulls to standing on anything that does not move away from her (think: Charlie). She is fast, but not as fast as Emma. She is also not as paranoid as Emma, who I am thinking might need valium to get through this stage. Of course, any toy that Emma is interested in must become, in her mind, the same toy Mary is fixated on. Mary merely sees Emma moving and wants to follow her. Example: Mary starts out on the carpet in the family room playing quietly. Emma finds her little "bouncing ball" in the corner of the kitchen. She immediately proclaims, "BOUNCING BAAAAALLLLL!!!!" and then, after a short moment of glee, yells "NO MARY - EMMA'S BOUNCING BALL". This draws Mary's attention and she begins to crawl towards the kitchen. Emma sees that Mary is on the move and starts to repeat that it is hers and will tell Mary to "get back!" and squeal with ear piercing fear. This further draws Mary's attention, etc., etc., etc. And so it goes all day long, from one toy to another, from one room to another, and I spend all day mediating and playing between the girls to establish fair turn-taking. It seems that if I am also playing with the toy Emma is not paranoid Mary will run off with it somewhere and bury it, never to be seen again. Toys that cannot be worked with are put out of reach on the other side of the gate blocking the stairs. Thus the toys receive a 'time out'. Discussing this with my friend Tricia, I wondered how and when it became reasonable to punish an inanimate object for something it did not do. What was even more odd was that we arrived at the same idea independently and saw no problem with it. The poor toys.

As an aside, I should mention that every day Emma comes up with something new that turns my head. Last week she started pretending she was a dog, panting and barking and giving sloppy dog kisses. That was "Emma Doggy". That transitioned into "Emma Tigger" (one of my parent's cats), and now to "Emma Dora". The later is really funny, as she cannot act out the thing that makes Dora intrinsically herself, or how she is different from Emma. So she just walks up and says "Hola" and then "Emma Dora". Every now and then she will talk to 'her' backpack, and sometimes she will spot Swiper the fox. She really prefers Emma Doggy, since she can lick you and get a response out of it. She also likes to greet everything. Here is a short litany of Emma greetings that are repeated daily: Morning Momma, Hi NeeNee (Mary), hi Charlie, hi crib, hi horse (rocking horse), hi doors (closet), hi clothes..... Hi birds, hi trees, hi mamma's red car, hi poops (that would be Charlie doing his thing outside). She also will say goodbye to everything. I personally blame the book "Goodnight Moon" for this stage.

So today her and I walked up to the Ice Cream Store (Coldstone Creamery) and along the way she was playing some bizarre toddler game which I could not even begin to comprehend. Every time she saw a tree (we walk along a lightly forested path), she would go up to it and cup her hands together and say "Got it!". Then she walked a little way, until a break in the trees and say "Wait!" as she jumped 3 times - no more, no less- and then released whatever it was that she had held captive in her hands (the tree's spirit??). This was repeated until we were done with that path. I cannot tell if this is better or worse than her previous trend of hugging every tree that she saw. I can't even imagine what could possibly come next.