Sand Eating Tigers

All children are imaginative, and mine are no exception. Liam can spend quite literally hours and days creating stories in his head and can spontaneously craft intricate games with rules only he seems to understand. He can come up with detailed projects for himself such as writing a non-fiction book about the life of Lewis & Clarke, creating a penny-carnival (complete with games, signs, and invitations) and making a book about leafs he has collected. Most recently, he has created a map of the United States and has colored it in according to average snowfall. (Yes. He really has done all of those things).

Lately, Beanie has started to emerge as quite the imaginative little bee. Left to his own devices, he will play for a long time all by himself acting out stories with his "babies" (a puppy he named "Trophy", "Scruffy" the dog, Tiger Baby, Puppy Baby and his doll, "Baby Bear"--all names given by him). He will hug and squeeze them and profess his love "I yuv my babies!!! I YUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUV Yooooooouuu soooooooooo much!!". He will feed them, burp them and put them bed and when they are naughty and knock over his blocks, he will discipline them accordingly.

But...sometimes bad things happen to his babies. Last week for instance, a giant red spider climbed into his bed and gave Baby Bear a shot in his hand and he cried. Luckily, Sawyer was there to step on it and squirt it with a water bottle. Then last night, a monster came out from under his bed, painted himself yellow (yea-yow) and began to dance around and scare everybody before scampering off into his brother's room. Luckily, brother sleeps like a hibernating bear and he didn't notice.

Then there are the scary tigers who eat sand, fruit bars and anybody who lives in a dessert, the trains that go on a track and eat cereal, his abusive preschool Spanish teacher who "hits him in the face", and the cookies and cell phones that mysteriously end up in his hands and/or mouth because "daddy told me to play with these."

I can only imagine what life will be like ten plus years from now. One child will be hard-wiring the car while the other creates the cover story. Excellent.