Creative Genius

The joke when I was growing up was that I loved stuffed animals, but was a little less than original with the names. Lobby the Lobster, Pally the Palomino and Froggy the Frog were some of my favorites. However, when I wrote stories, I came up with some amazing (and crazy!) names. Most of the time, they were just random consonants strung together.

Now that I have a child of my own, I love listening to the names she comes up with. Much like her mother, Abbey isn't exactly original when naming her stuffed animals. For example, we have Bamster the Hamster and Ruffy the dog (b/c he says "ruff, ruff" when pressed on the bottom). However, she also seems to have inherited my knack for creating unique names when telling stories. Just last week she told me a lengthy story about Elementra the Cat, who lived in a castle. There is also the princess, Linja, and the kids in her make-believe class, Alinda and Lisana. I love it!

Speaking of, we are walking a bit of a fine line with our little creative genius lately. She loves to play make-believe SO much that she really doesn't want to do anything else. For example, she cannot ride a bike and really doesn't want to learn how b/c she is too busy playing school or princess or teenager or Nutcracker. I'd really like to start playing some games with her also, like Candy Land or Chutes and Ladders, but she's just not interested. Her teacher sends home "homework" for her to work on writing her letters, and the only way I can get her to work on them is to remind her that teenagers have lots of homework. Geez!

On the one hand, I don't want to squelch her creativity or love of imaginary play, but I also want her to broaden her horizons a bit and learn to do new things. Sigh. But, as anything else with Abbey, if she's not interested, she ain't doing it. Period.

As for our little boy...he is growing and changing, which makes me feel a mix of joy and sadness. He's not going to be a "baby" much longer. In fact, his first birthday is less than a month away. He started crawling last week and it is just about the cutest thing ever!!!! Yes, my kids are late movers...and I love it. Still, he's so mellow that he's pretty content to just play with whatever is within his reach. Mostly he just crawls after me and to the cat (I think he vastly prefers Minx the cat to our dog, Leroy. Yes!)

I met with the pastor at our church today and he is all set to be baptized on Sunday, March 7th (even though we all know that Kathy secretly baptizes all of our babies in the hospital, hehe). We are having our family in from both coasts to celebrate both his birthday on March 5th and the baptism. As Abbey says, "Eato is getting bappertized." Abs keeps talking about how she is going to cry on his birthday b/c he won't be a baby anymore. She is the best big sister EVER! We are so blessed.