It's called suction...

People often talk about the short attention span of kids and how it's extremely easy for them to lose focus. Lana is no exception in this regard, and whenever we go out for dinner, we always try to make sure that we bring our iPod "survival kit" loaded with games and movies! I recall a few months back when what I call the "TESLA" group (an acronym comprising the names of the kids in the group) met up for dinner during Mid-Autumn Festival. By the end of dinner, each kid was sitting with either an iPhone or Android device, completely absorbed in the game they were playing (with the exception of Shayne of course, who was sitting quietly and eating away - she was the smart one)!

Having said that, however, I am sometimes amazed at how Lana can be fixated and focused on a particular thing for a really long period of time. For example, one of her favourite toys lately is "Play-Doh". She'll be happy sitting in her chair for hours smooshing them into different shapes. (One time, Lana climbed out of her chair in the middle of playing Play-Doh and walked off - so I assumed she had finished playing with them and I packed it all up. I thought there was a lot of truth in the old adage of "out of sight, out of mind" - at least until Lana came back a few minutes later and, upon noticing that her Play-Doh had vanished, burst hysterically into tears and wailed "I want more Play-Doh"!)

Oh, and when I mentioned "different shapes" above, I actually only mean "balls". For some reason, Lana is content with just making balls. Every time I suggest making something different, she'll respond with "no daddy, you make a ball", then proceed to rip off the tiniest piece of Play-Doh for me to roll into a ball. And oftentimes my attempts at discreetly rolling the Play-Doh into a worm or sausage is met with "no daddy, you make a ball", upon which Lana will promptly deem me unworthy of making a Play-Doh ball and confiscate the piece I'm working on. :| It's all right though, because the short-attention-span mechanism kicks into gear shortly, and within half a minute, Lana will be asking me to make a ball for her again. ;) Once or twice, we've also let her mix a few Play-Doh colours together, resulting in what she calls "multi-balls" (multi-coloured balls) which can be a source of fun for hours and hours. (Warning: Making lots of "multi-balls" will eventually lead you to only have a Play-Doh set consisting of only one colour - brown.)

The other things that she loves of late is "swimming" in the bathtub. A few days ago while she was happily splashing away in the bathtub, I let out the water too soon (despite her protests) and suddenly found myself faced with a traumatized little girl, bawling as she watched her fun going down the drain along with her bathwater. So yesterday, I decided on a different tack - I asked her to pull the plug to let the water out instead. As the water started to drain out, I put Lana's hand over the drain and told her: "it's called suction". I eventually convinced her to put her foot over the drain as well just for fun. Lana was fascinated by this - and my little ruse had worked. ;)

So bedtime finally came along, we said our prayers together, and then we tucked our little girl into bed. Nicole and I were sitting outside in the living room just unwinding and relaxing - she was blogging away on the computer and I was playing my video games on the TV screen. A few minutes went by when suddenly Lana called out from her bedroom:

"...it's called 'suction', daddy - it's called 'suction'..."

So much for the short-attention span theory.

I hope you all had as much fun for Christmas as we did, and may your New Year be filled with multi-balls and suction. :)