What is it with babies and remotes?!

It seems that there's a universal connection between all babies and their obsessions. They all seem to love phones and TV remotes. And not those crappy brightly coloured fake ones. Oh no. They have to have the real deal. This morning munchkin finally managed to climb onto the sofa. It's taken 11 months, so we had a good run, but she's finally grown enough to reach up with her knees, and the call of the TV remote was too strong...! She is constantly grabbing the damn thing, and hogs it when she's watching Cbeebies, holding it with a death grip, pressing all the buttons and managing to change settings on the TV I didn't even know we had (or know how to change back!!). 

But it's not just the TV remote she loves. She also has an iPhone addiction. Yes my child is a real Apple fanatic. And yes, specifically iPhones. She's already learnt to swipe the screen to scroll through photos, and annoyingly has worked out the home button, which means she is continually closing apps, deleting them, moving them around and bringing up poor old Siri (who gets very confused by the baby babbling!). Dad kindly dug out an old HTC for her to play with as she loves commandeering our phones so much. You think she likes it. No! No touch screen, no home button to press (the alphanumeric keypad on the front apparently just doesn't cut it) and it just isn't an iPhone. She will hold it up to her head if you say "ring ring hello" though. But then she's started doing that with everything else... hair brushes. toys. the TV remote...!

I've also learnt that anything paper-wise cannot be left within reach, unless you're happy with it being torn into a billion little pieces. Leave the room with an envelope on the coffee table at your peril. That also goes for the cheques I had in my purse. Another favourite play thing of hers. Give her my purse or handbag and she will literally have a good 30 minutes of fun pulling everything out and scattering my cards and personal belongings all over the living room floor. 

She's also gotten a bit fanatical about sharing. Anything she's holding, she'll share. I frequently catch her in the car mirror (when I'm driving and should be watching the road... damn the child mirror! It'll be the death of me!) holding out her dummy for her sheep which dangles from her car seat. And the whole family gets a slobbery dummy in the face quite often too. It's the first thing she does in the morning when you go and wake her up in her cot... She lies there, smiles, pops the dummy out her mouth and holds it out until you pretend to suck it. It's quite cute actually. Last night she decided to grab the tooth brush off me and brush my teeth for me. Which was also cute. Until she did it again this morning and I got a face full of baby spit and tooth paste!

Yes I think all babies seem to love the same things to play with. Funny how none of them are actual toys. That we bought with hard earned cash. Makers me wonder why we bother buying them toys when a battered TV remote, a plastic bowl and a wooden spoon would be miles more fun!