SLOANE THESE DAYS, AND HARK THE HERALD

A few days ago Sloane told me a story about what happened at school and ended her story with, "...and that was inappropriate." It took a whole bunch of restraint not to dissolve into giggles at this, and I nodded along seriously. My life feels a little more complete, now that I have heard a three year old pronounce the word, "inappropriate".

Sloane these days is constantly playing pretend.

When I go to pick her up after school, she is a kitty cat, and she meow meow's her hello.  When we get home, she tells me that not only is she a giraffe, but I am a giraffe too, and so is Logan and dad, too. Then she suggests different scenarios that we should act out.

Last Saturday, as soon as she woke up, she did some dancing and singing and then told me the following things: "Hi, what's your name? I am Sloane Lu. I have no parents (sad face), I have no mom and dad! I'm an orphan. And I have no house, I have no bed and no toys. All I have is a sofa....I'm going to get married to a boy. And look! Now I have a baby growing in my stomach. It's a baby boy, and he's kicking."

Then she declared that we will play Snow White - she was Snow White, and i was the evil queen, and after I offered her the poison apple, she fell down with such dramatics that Ken and I were impressed. After her teddy bear (who was her friend and also a doctor) woke her up, she announced that we would now play little mermaid. A pretend play of the little mermaid turned into Ariel (Sloane) and prince Eric (me) going on a picnic and then realizing that they needed to go grocery shopping. And on and on...

It's really fun, but also it can get tiring because her playing pretend all the time means that she wants us to be playing pretend all the time which is hard to do when you're also trying to get things done or when you want your daughter to stop being a zebra and turn back into a human so she can put her toys away. I'm learning so many things- I'm learning how to be be patient, how to communicate instructions and be firm when I need to. And I'm learning how to get down on the ground and play my heart out.

Sloane is three and a half and Logan is six months old, so they are almost exactly three years apart. I would have thought Logan too young to play with Sloane but Sloane has facilitated play with her over the past few months in a way that totally surprises me.

Sloane pretends Logan's foot is a flute or a trumpet and sings into it.

Sloane reads Logan her books - not the actual words of the book, but her own interpretation of it. 

Sloane introduces all of her animals and tells Logan about each of their tendencies.
Sloane feeds Logan pretend food 

Sloane helps give her a bath
Sloane hands Logan a rattle and when Logan bangs it against the table, Sloane bangs along in unison.

It's awesome!

What else is awesome is how Sloane gets really into a song and wants to listen to it a hundred times to learn it and then wants to sing it all the time thereafter. Recently, it has been "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" coming out of the Christmas season. I got some video of her singing it - she actually does know all the words to the song but apparently I caught her in a moment of extra vulnerability.