Paci Wars

Maddy loves baby dolls. She will purse her lips and kiss them on demand and on her own. Kissing is one of the sweetest things she does.

She has a doll that comes with a paci. Recently she has recognized it as such and pulls the paci out and tries to suck on it. Hard to do considering the nipple is no more than a nub of hard plastic. Just the same, she pulls it out of the doll's mouth and attempts to suck on it whenever she's playing in the toy bin.

Lately (because this is where your mind goes when you are stuck at home all summer playing with an infant) I've been making crying sounds when she takes it out of her doll's mouth. She looks strangely at the doll and I say, "Give the baby the paci. That's the baby's paci." Of course she doesn't give it to the baby. She usually just pushes it aside when she's done with it.

Today, when she tired of the doll's paci, I put it back in the doll's mouth. She watched me do this from across the room. Maddy then crawled over to the doll and ripped the paci from its mouth to put in her own. Later, when she was distracted, I gave the paci back to the doll. This time she didn't see me do it. As she's playing I see her glance at the doll. She stops what she's doing, crawls over to the doll, gives it a dirty look and once again rips the paci out. This became a very fun game for me, one which Maddy repeated multiple times. She would not allow her doll to have a paci which she felt belonged to her.

I guess we're going to have to work on sharing.