Our Imaginative Simon

These days, Simon's pretend play is nonstop. Literally from morning till night, he directs us all in our roles and what we are to do in whichever imaginary land or alternate reality we happen to be inhabiting at the moment.

Some of the themes come from daycare--as he comes home knowing all about characters that we have never exposed him to, like Buzz Lightyear and the Toy Story gang:

To Infinity, and...Veyon? (7 sec):

(by the way, if at the end of this clip you are grimacing in preparation for the spill that appears to be on the way, you are correct...slammed right into the carpet...but then hopped right back up to fly again!)

Other play themes come from everyday life--recently we have done a LOT of playing house. Sometimes the roles switch around, but for a few weeks now he's been pretty consistent with his roles: he is the baby, Theodore is the big brother, I (Mom) am Daddy, and Dad is Mommy. Occasionally someone gets to be a sister...and the other day Theodore got to be Mommy, while I was the big brother.

What most amazes us is how readily he adapts stories--that he has JUST been exposed to--into his play. After choosing to read The Lorax with Daddy one morning, he then declared "let's play The Lorax!" It was a Saturday morning and I was holed up in our bedroom trying to write a lecture, but instead was enjoying overhearing "hmmm, I'm going to chop down this tree...CHOP...CHOP...hey! what's that?!" from Andy, followed by "I am the Lorax!" and "I speak for the trees!" from Simon.

About a month ago, Theodore received a book in the mail from the Imagination Library--one of my new all-time favorite children's books, actually--called A Mother for Choco. I read it to Simon ONE time and he looked up at the end and said "let's play Choco! You are the mother bear and I am Choco...".

Just this week a mysterious package arrived for us from New Jersey. Mysterious mostly because we don't think we know anyone in New Jersey--but there it was, hand written address and everything. We opened it up and -surprise!- Halloween costumes passed on to us from Ellie and Ben, presumably via their friends in NJ, who must have kids older than ours but younger than Ellie and Ben! Simon was very excited...thankfully, one of them fit him (barely). So immediately we were playing "Dragon":

Dragon Play (~1 min):

Thank you Ben & Ellie for the costumes!

As for Theodore, aside from a nasty cold-turned-ear-infection the past couple of weeks, he is doing well. I finally got a shot of the tooth a couple weeks ago (but you have to look pretty closely)--and now there are two down there, actually.

Have a good weekend, everyone!