The Land of Make-Believe

It's been fun to see the recent things the kids have been pretending. I'm such a left-brained nerd that I rarely remember doing much make believe. I loved to color or build with blocks, but most of what I did were geometric shapes. It's fun to see the things my kids come up with. It also forces me out of my own mental box. We're still doing our picnics on nice days and those are fertile ground for imagination games. Today we were in a large box a friend dropped off after her bathroom remodel (it had contained her bathtub) and they decided it was our dog sled on the ice in the North Pole. So one of us had to be the vicious polar bear, while the other drove the sled, and the third was the dog pulling it. No pictures of that one, unfortunately.


A few days ago we were fairies and each one of us got to put wild flowers in our hair and "dance like princesses" as Benjamin instructed us. "Higher on your toes, Bella! Princesses dance on their toes!" he commanded. I'm sure our neighbors loved watching that display.


Then today while Bella took an unusually long nap, Benjamin decided to play with the Jenga blocks and what does he do? A very typical thing for a child of mine - build a parking lot. He lined each block up just so (on a book for added stability) and then pulled his cars in one by one and lined them up in each of their spots. Not one after the other, mind you! He assigned each one a different location in various places throughout the lot, until all the spots were filled. Future valet parking attendant?


However, after this very left brain behavior, Bella woke up and the creative juices flowed. He collected his Diego doll and built him a "tomb" in which he could "sleep." He gave him a cardboard roof, using the Jenga box, and then put a "large stone" on the side, using a few more blocks. Then he decided that he needed an "angel to come roll away the stone." So he retrieved his Spiderman doll. Spiderman was naked, though, as are all dolls in our house for some reason that I've long since stopped trying to discover. We were unable to locate his real outfit, so he decided to remove his sock and clothe Spiderman in his sock, since that was a more appropriate color anyway. In the end, Angel Spiderman, clothed in a white Hanes robe, saved Diego from his Jenga tomb saying, "Lazarus, come forth!" and smashing the tomb to rubble using only his head. It was so successful we had to do it 3 more times.



My favorite of all though, was during our game of hide-and-seek (thankfully outside, as you'll understand in a minute). Benjamin was hiding and Bella and I were seeking, which involves walking around and pretending not to see him blatantly sticking out from under a bush. When I finally "found" him, he jumped up and I noticed his pants had a large wet spot in a very obvious place. "Benjamin, did you pee your pants while you were hiding?" "I didn't want you to see me, so I just pretended there was a toilet in my pants." Now that's an imagination!


Just had to throw in the pj picture. It never ceases to amaze me how crazy Benjamin's hair looks in the morning! I'm convinced he must sleep in a head-stand to make it look like that.