Let the Imagination Games Begin

My son's imagination has exploded in the last two weeks. In a good way, not in a Monty Pythonish incredibly fake blood and brains everywhere kind of way. Instead of being eager to get out of the house and experience everything around him, it is now a stuggle to get him out the door. Instead, he would rather link my laundry baskets together and push his "coaches" (yes, we've been watching Thomas the Tank Engine) around the house. Or lie on our couch "sleeping" or "watching tv" (our tv is not in the living room) then fall out of bed and come running to me saying "I wake up. Good morning, mommy!". I find his plain wooden blocks stacked up on plates and in old yogurt containers around the house when he has been making "birthday cake" and "sandwiches" for me. The shoe rack he dismantled last winter now doubles as railway tracks, forklifts that must be attatched to his tractor, snow plows, trailers . . . the list is endless. At least a thousand times a day I find myself being asked to greet a small plastic person or animal, and engage in conversations that go something like this:
"Hello, hippopotamus, how are you."
"Oh good. I eat some cake"
"Is it yummy cake"
"Birthday cake"
"Oh, hippopotamus, that looks delicious."
"Yummy cake"
"yes, I see."
"Mommy eat it"

At which point a large wooden block or plastic plate or alligator or pillow will be thrust into my face until I pretend to chew and swallow and say "yum, yum."

Needless to say, this makes my days quite interesting. And as long as I am nearby, it means I get a bit of a break from endlessly reading "Curious George Rides a Bicycle" and "The Very Hungry Caterpillar", and can actually read something I might enjoy. Until I get dragged away to look at what Thomas is pulling on his tracks, or forced to move off the big "car" or . . . well, you get the idea.

I was just saying to Dave tonight that I don't know where he gets this overactive imagination from . . . imagine us having a child who is perfectly content to live inside his own head.