A Budding Imagination

As I wrote earlier, Claire has recently become friends with some imaginary characters. We had lunch at my grandmother's house last week, and while we were there, Claire discovered a stash of teddy bears. She had the best time making up stories with them, and deciding which ones were the mommies who were cooking in the kitchen, which ones were the babies who needed a nap, and which ones were the daddies who left for work. Well, she hasn't stopped talking about these bears. They "go" with her just about everywhere, including needing to be buckled up in the car, and she's even started setting a place for them at her little table when she eats breakfast and lunch. It's really cute watching her little imagination taking off.

We also had our first encounter with monsters the other day. We were all having a fun picnic dinner on the patio, and Claire was playing nicely in the yard. Once it got dark, though, she ran over and started saying "I'm scared! I'm scared!" We asked her what she was scared of, and she said "MONSTERS!!!" and ran inside. Luckily, Mommy was prepared with special anti-monster powder that kept the monsters away and we were safe again. She hasn't mentioned monsters again, thank goodness, but I can't figure out where she learned about them in the first place.