Reading to my Animals

Reading to my Animals

Friday, February 5, 2010

Imagination

What happens to adults when we grow up? Why do we stop playing? It is so much darn fun!

The last few weeks I've been noticing that little boy is teetering into the world of imaginative play! It's wonderful to catch or to sneak around the corner and find him reading to all his stuffed animals neatly THROWN on his bedroom floor.

He's always been a good "player." He occupies himself with his toys and is interested in all of the things little kids at his age should be. He fancies my sparkly high heeled shoes which alarms Pat just a little. Another favorite is playing with mommy's make-up, err, um, I mean, zipping and unzipping the make-up cases and opening eye shadows and that sort of thing. There's no application unless you count the one time he dug into my purse in the back seat while I was driving, grabbed a lipstick tube and as I looked into my rear view mirror had appropriately applied just the right amount of bamboo pink (clinique) onto his pouty little lips! But that's cute, right?

Every other month I comment on his particular age and how much more fun it is than the last. But really, this is a fun age! He can say a gazillion words, for the most part can tell me what he wants and adamantly what he does not want. He snuggles, wishes everyone in the house happy birthday randomly, and plays until he can't stand it anymore. And I plain old love it!

But this imaginative play stuff...it's so funny to watch. He loves to go to his big brother's basketball games and watch him play, for one, because he loves basketball and two for the overly butterd and salty popcorn that comes in the brown lunch bag. So last night, he finds the cupboard with our brown lunch baggies, grabs one and pretends it's full of that wondrous snack we call popcorn. He digs his hand in, snatches some make-believe popcorn and chomps on it likes it's the best he's ever had! Then he proceeds to give me, the dog and Pat some. It's adorable.

This one time (and not at band camp) he was running back and forth between the living room and dining room. He stopped in the dining room, put his hand out like he was the Pope blessing the people and calmly said, "It's OK...It's OK..." I'm not sure at all what this was about. No one else was in the room - that I could see anyway. A little frightening now that I think about it.

The point - this kid gives me great joy. He plays without constraint. He loves without embarrassment. He's the happiest person I know. And he oozes with the kind of joy that everyone needs every day of their life. You need to get it from somewhere because man o' man my heart is full of joy with this kid. I'm not saying you need to have children in order to feel this way, you just need to get the joy from somewhere.


Don't misunderstand. This kid makes me see red sometimes and I know it'll only get worse. I won't be the kind of mother that thinks her kid can't do wrong. (We know who his daddy is for pete's sake! I love you Paddy!) Aedan is manipulative with the sweet way he says I love you at 4:00 a.m. when he doesn't want to sleep in his bed anymore. Or doing all he can to stay up for just one more minute. Or just screaming at me for no good reason. But in some way it's tolerable, we deal with it and all is forgotten. Too bad I can't do this with other people in my life :-)

Side story - Aedan seems to get hit in the head a lot. Last night he ran into a door or something at the YWCA - I wasn't there so I don't have details but apparently it knocked him straight back onto his butt and as he was brushing himself off Pat heard him saying, "Aedan's OK...Aedan's OK." Either he's just getting used to knocks on the head or we've got a super tough kid.

Funny.




1 comment:

Anonymous said...

for the love of all things good will you PU-LEEZ update this!
love,
not kim, who does not check it almost daily.