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Willow's imagination blossoms

Willow's imagination has started taking off.
A few months ago, she started treating her Little People Disney princesses like puppets, speaking for them and hopping them around the floor, mingling with other tiny dolls or horses.
That was the beginning, really; now she imagines dragons nesting under the dining room table, ready to take flight to steal the food of Lily's tray. Or she piles up wooden train track tiles in a bean bag and folds the bean bag on itself, treating the bean bag (as bulky as it is) like a shopping bag. She drags that shopping bag across the floor, then unloads it on the coffee table in front of me, ready to check out her "groceries."
Sometimes, she tugs Lily into her make-believe world, as the second princess locked in a tower built of stacking blocks that is about to be bombarded by the fiery breath of a much meaner dragon than those that reside under the dining room table.
Of course Lily has an imagination too. She likes to imagine what that thing over there will taste like in her mouth. That thing can be anything, anywhere, but you know babies.
We capitalized on Willow's newfound imaginings at Christmastime, showering her in make-believe-invoking presents. She got a painting easel and art supplies, Play-Doh and, my favorite, a mat adorned with roads, buildings and people that kiddos can race their cars over (Fisher Price's Wheelies). The mat has an amusement park, a farm and a zoo, and the scenarios Willow and I maneuver through on the floor often launch into bigger plays; Willow grabs my hand and leads me from her room into the living room (the zoo) to see the monkeys, the meerkats and the hippos.
And if this cold snap ever snaps, maybe she can bring her imagination with me to the real zoo.
What fun that will be.
Enjoy the adventures!

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