Wallaby's

Nate's imagination has been off the charts lately. He's making up songs and even some long narrative stories,with some prompting. He told his dad a very long story about some sheep named John and Lilly yesterday. And he loves to tell me about this cool place called "Wallaby's." Apparently, you can only get there via helicopter and there is an awesome pink T. Rex that you can play fetch with. There's a lot of other great stuff to do there too. Of course I wrote it all down on a scrap of paper that I can no longer find.

And he loves to "pretend." If I tell him that what he's holding is not a xylophone, for example, he will say, "well, we can pretend it's a xylophone" in a voice that clearly implies I lack any imagination. The other morning we were cuddling in bed when I told him that I was going to get up and take a shower. He asked me not to go, and tried to convince me to stay, saying, "You can be a pretend clean woman!"

He's also very into pretending that he's reading. We were looking at some of our flashcards the other day while he pretended to read the information on the back. By the way - flashcards are the best. I find great $1 or $2 packs all over the place (usually at my sub-par Target) and they have provided hours of entertainment. The animal ones are my favorites. I don't know what possessed me to buy the insect ones. I guess I assumed Nate would enjoy them (which he does), but now I have to look at pictures of various spiders. Not cool.

Here we are playing with the dinosaur flashcards (he's feeling under the weather, hence the rosy cheeks, shiny lips and sniffles): 

What do your children like to imagine?