Week ending oct 19, 2008:

Week ending Oct 19, 2008: This week I had multiple conversations with Chloe about why we cannot have a pet dolphin. She has decided that she wants to be a dolphin trainer and I explained that a good way to become a dolphin trainer is to volunteer at the Aquarium like Aunt Tricia did so she could practice and learn about dolphins. Chloe wanted to get started with the practicing right away. Since I wouldn’t consent to a pet dolphin she took to giving commands to her stuffed dolphin and throwing it in the air as though it were doing tricks.

Also this week we saw a butterfly on our zinnia. I called the kids over to the window to see it and they both “oohed” and “aahed” and said it was beautiful. Then Alex looked at Chloe and said “it is almost as beautiful as you are”. Even Chloe was taken aback and asked him if that is really what he had said. He really did!

I’ve explained before how the kids tend to reenact recent events in their imaginary play to try to get a handle on what has happened. Many months ago when one of them threw up, they spent a week pretending to throw up and pretending their toys were throwing up. In the last few months I’ve been noticing them doing a lot of pretending about packing for a pretend trip. Since we went on 4 week long vacations this year and several shorter trips, we do seem to be constantly packing. In their play, the packing is real. They have a whole draw full of back packs and duffle bags and they will pull all of them out and fill all of them to capacity. This week the pretend destination was the Russian Ballet. The real destination was my bedroom in which they emptied the contents of all the bags.

Also this week we went to a corn maze at Greenstreet Growers in Lothian with 8 other kids from our neighborhood: http://picasaweb.google.com/constance.phelps/Greenstreet#

And we went to a birthday party with TWO ponies at which Chloe got no less than 6 pony rides: http://picasaweb.google.com/constance.phelps/NatalieDixonS5thBday#