Method to her madness

Who would have thought that one day I would be fascinated by watching my daughter unwrap paper from her crayons? This is Wendy's latest pasttime. She sneaks off to her crayons and peels the paper from crayons. Not just one or two, but over a dozen at a time. It captivates her attention for 20-30 minutes.

We've tried derailing her attention into doing something other than peeling crayon wrappers, but she keeps going back to her hobby. And, she generally picks up after herself, too. She knows to throw away the big wrappers and to put away her naked crayons.

I was watching her peel crayon wrappers last night, and realized a method to her obsession. She carefully chooses one crayon from the box; she will sort through them to find just the right one. She holds it like a microphone and uses her index finger to push down on the top of the crayon. If the crayon doesn't slide, she flips it around and tries the other side. If the crayon doesn't slide in the wrapper, she'll either discard it and find a new one. Or, if the wrapper is already torn, she'll peel a bit of the paper away and try pushing again. When she finds one crayon that slides easily in the wrapper, she'll push and rotate the crayon until she has enough of a grip on the crayon with one hand and a good grip of the wrapper in the other. She'll push, rotate, and pull until the crayon is wrapperless. Then, she disgards the disrobed crayon and finds the next one.

It's amazing why she finds this so fascinating, or even why I'm so captivated by watching her. Also, I think it's interesting that the naked crayons also no longer have names. They're just free and unnamed colors, the way nature likes them.