Enjoying the Moment

LP's imagination is blooming. I overhear it in her dialogues with herself and her toys, in her growing conversations with us and in witnessing her play.

She scribbled on a piece of paper and put a paper penguin on top of it and announced "The penguin is lying down in the mud."

She got a notion to wallpaper the built in cabinet and had me supplying her the painter's tape (every parent's best friend) to put up her newspaper strip "wallpaper."

One of her favorite games involves casting herself as Gossie, ImprovDad as Gertie and me as Ollie (all from Olivier Dunrea's gosling books). She puts on ImprovDad's dress boots (which are deep red) and clomps around the house ordering us around in true Gossie style.

It is phenomenal to think of all the things that are happening in her brain, all the connections being made, all the neurons firing in new zippy patterns that allow her creativity to emerge.

And despite my deep delight, it is easy to want to look away, get distracted with other things even when she is pulling on my leg for me to play too. Yet I know that taking in and enjoying these moments is fuel for getting through the more difficult times. The spillover meltdowns that she has always been prone to that are now fueled by more intense feelings and experiences. The ten thousand interactions during the day where she swings between fiercely wanting independence and desperately wanting to be held and carried. All developmentally on cue. All of those things the work she needs to be doing. All of those behaviors are part of the whole that comes out in her imaginative play.

So I try to breathe deeply and take it in...enjoying her creativity, her storytelling, her imaginative flow and then...breathe more deeply through the other parts.