Amber has been drawing for a long time, probably a year. So far, she has never really attempted to draw anything decipherable, although one time I had drawn some little shapes scattered around the page and she scribbled on top of each one. She can sort of make "circles" and "stripes" and "dots" and "rain" if you suggest it, but that's about it.

For most of that time, putting the cap on the back of the pen (usually like felt-tip pens are designed to store the cap on the butt-end, when you're using them). If you did that, she would get very upset, crying and falling down on the floor, and sometimes she couldn't even get over it when you took it back off again. The proper place was just to take it off and throw it on the floor. My suspicion was that she didn't quite understand all the reasons pens sometimes don't work, and therefore didn't trust putting the cap on the back like that.

Well, she finally figured it out. Now she takes the cap off, and puts it on the back, much of the time. Still doesn't put it back on when she's done; I have to do that.

She really doesn't deal well with any sort of failure. If anything goes wrong with what she's doing, she basically falls apart, gets upset and mad, kicks the toys and throws them away. She's always been that way. Vera just got her these stacking flowers, with stems and other bits that you can plug into each other in an almost endless stack. Amber loves to put together big flowers, but they don't stay together very well, and if any parts fall off that's just it, she's mad and throws the whole thing down.

I may have mentioned, and I know I captured some video, that she also likes to stack blocks. She has these blocks of different shapes and sizes, fairly typical kid-toys, and I think it's a normal kid-thing to do, to just put them on top of each other and make a tower. She loves it. But you keep stacking, and guess what, eventually they are going to fall down. They always do. And she gets so upset about it, almost in tears, pretty much every time. I hope she learns to deal with challenges better as she grows up.