Playing at the park or schoolyard, we often interrupt "regular" play for imaginary picnics and pretend naps. Recently Helena's begun to watch imaginary TV.
Playing hide/chase, this time the menace being an unseen lion, Helena announces she's going to kill it. I bite my lip at this — I'm not keen on banning any kind of play outright, particularly since exposure to this kind of play is pretty much inevitable, but it does make me uncomfortable; for the timebeing, I let myself watch how she herself incorporates such outside influences. Her hand turns into something like a phaser (she definitely does not call it a gun). And so she goes lion-hunting. She shoots. Then (and I loosely translate/paraphrase her toddler French): "Oh, no! The poor lion! I think he's hurt! We have to take him to the doctor!" So we take him to the doctor.
Some mornings she gets out of bed and happily proclaims, "J'ai grandie!" (I've grown!)
At the mall last week: "Look! Il y a deux soleils!" I have no idea what she's talking about. The lights? "Deux soleils! Look! Un juste a coté l'éléphant." Still, no idea. "Puis un avion and a raccoon, avec le soleil!" (Yes, that's a pretty accurate transcript of her language switching.) Soleil, éléphant, avion, raccoon, soleil. S. E. A. R. S.
Some evenings, Helena asks me to sing her to sleep. Sometimes she has a specific song in mind. Last night, she stopped me midtune. Because her teddybear was crying. Because her teddybear didn't want to hear this song. OK. But she begged me to continue. So I did, but the damn teddybear started crying again. Finally, Helena buried him under her blankets, making sure his ears were plugged and he wouldn't hear.
The other morning, while looking for her magic sandal (that would be the weird part of the anecdote), she tells me (and this part is hopelessly cute), "Tu es la plus belle des princesses!"
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4 comments:
My daughter has taken to cupping my face in her hands, looking me in the eye and saying, "You're so sweet!". which is of course irresistable but was a lot funnier when she didn't have the word quite right and kept telling me I was "sweep".
I'm impressed with Helena's creativity in picking up the first letter of SEARS and correctly using the letters for her own imaginings. Isn't it a surprise and delight when your kids do such brilliant little examples of out of the box thinking?
Totally irresistible. I wonder though in Helena's case where she gets some of this from — I mean, I don't cup her face, or stroke her cheek, or...
I don't know how "brilliant" her take on letters is. Seems to me it's more her mnemonic device (in reverse?) — she associates the letters more closely to the pictures in her various alphabet puzzles and books than to the letter names. Weird and amazing how they learn.
I love hearing your Helena stories, Isabella. They give me hope that someday I will be able to have a fun conversation with my boy. For now we're stuck listening to "Weeble weeble? Gah!" Which is cute, but not as cute as Helena.
That child is Snake-Mule-Ape-Rabbit-Toad! (we have an English alphabet book - Animal ABCs)
What wonderous games. If only we could see what exactly is going on, but maybe there is nothing, pure random blissing about.
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