Color Coordinating

Watching A-chan color coordinate is an interesting if baffling pasttime. There are certain rules that apply to toys but apparently not to clothing or anything else. But colored toys must match. Pink cup with pink plate with pink spoon. All the red shapes together, all the green shapes together. Princesses in pink dresses on the right, princesses in blue dresses in the middle, princesses in yellow dresses on the left. We occassionally try to mix things up a little by going wild and putting a blue block in with the yellow ones. It generally ends up backfiring on us.

The very interesting part is watching her color on a computer game. There is a picture and beside it a palette of 15 colors to choose from. You click on a color and then click on the picture in the place that you want that color. A-chan's philosphy is that colors don't mix, so she ends up with the entire picture one color. The she moves on to redo the same picture in the next color on the palette and so on until she has painted that picture all the colors. It is only then that she can move on to the next picture to repeat the procedure. It is always done in order of the colors in the palette and if she happens to leave the computer during the process of painting, she will pick up where she left off, going to the next color. Although usually she only comes away from the computer when she has 'finished' a picture, she won't leave until she has completed each of the palette colors. She will invite me to sit and paint with her, then offer me the use of the next color in the palette. I do try to be a wild child and paint the picture with many colors but she then goes back to the color I was supposed to have stuck to and paint the picture entirely of that color.

I must admit to being a bit worried over this behaviour. It seems so stifling to me. I'm not sure how to get her to use different colors together and I feel that it's important for her to do so. But maybe it's nothing to worry about. She seems to be in a phase of categorization lately and perhaps the color coordination is a part of that. We've been hearing a lot of "this is not lemonade, it's punch" and "it's not morning, it's evening" lately.

Another phenomenon that we've been pelted with today was the "But, why?" question about a thousand times. (Okay, so it was only about 10, but it still seemed like a thousand) It's very cute how she will ask, "But why, Mata?"