Buggy!

For a good month now Sadie has had a new friend...not Madi or Molly (though she loves them), we have entered the world of imaginary friends.  Ella has never had an imaginary friend or played pretend much, she's just a pretty realistic kid (like me!) and isn't drawn to fantasy. Sadie however, is proving to already like pretend play (she'll start barking and crawling on all 4s and say "Mommy?  Doggy?" and want me to pretend with her).  It's super cute because she just seems so young to understand/make up her own games and now, a little friend.

Basically, Sadie really likes bugs.  She's seen a lot more of them since spring started early this year and wants to watch them, talk to them, and touch them.  I guess bugs not being available whenever she wanted to see them brought about "buggy."  One day she started holding her hands together, carefully cupped one over the other, and would NOT separate them.  She took an entire bath that night crying, standing up, with her hands together like that.  I had no idea what was going on and she wasn't explaining yet.  But, with the recent nursemaid's elbow situation I was scared when she wouldn't move her arms down.  Nonetheless, she seemed able to move, just didn't want to.  The next morning when i came into her room she clasped her hands together and said "buggy!" And I started to get it...she was pretending to hold a bug.  She then proceeded to get really excited if I asked if she had a bug in her hands and nodded excitedly.  I asked if I could see it and she let me peek into her hands and was ecstatic when I played along and oooed and ahhed over "buggy."  Then she proclaimed buggy "all gone" and asked to get out of bed.

Since then, every day for almost a month, buggy usually shows up.  If you ask her about it, she'll hold her hadns out and let you "see" him or she'll say he's "on the wall" or "on the floor" or "all gone."  Not sure how long her bug love will last (Ella's already showed her quite a different reaction to bugs- screaming and say ewwww whenever she sees one).  But, we're capitalizing on it.  She will sit on the floor and watch and talk to a bug for a long time.  We watched an ant hill on a walk the other day for a good 10 minutes. She played with a caterpillar a the park the other day for 20 minutes.  And I took her to the Science Center for a bug exhibit and she loved it while the other kids with us thought it was gross.  It's really fun to indulge her love of bugs and "buggy" and I'm interested to see what other fun things come from this little girl who is proving to be quite different from #1.