"Kate, look into the camera please." Results in a strange contortion of a pose usually. Funny.

Imagination is big in our house right now. Four year olds don't have a clear line of demarcation between real and unreal, so we've been working on understanding more of that. It's hard to figure out if stories about school really happened or if they were perhaps made up or slightly altered. Kate kept talking about a little boy named Christian who said all sorts of not very nice things to her. Christian, it turns out, hadn't been at the school for over 7 weeks!

Her brothers will tell her she is a liar when she tells them something they know not to be entirely true. Liar is such a negative word, and I've asked them not to use it anymore and explained to them that this is a stage in a child's development where she's still learning what is real for everyone and what is real for just her.

We don't call it lies. We call it imagination. She plays imagining quite a bit. While I'm typing this she asked me if she could imagine she's a mommy. Of course she can, imagining is always fine, and she doesn't have to ask me.

Kate has imaginary dogs, imaginary dinosaurs and she loves to imagine that all her toys are real.She re-enacts and imagines episodes from her favorite tv shows. It happens while she's watching and it happens after the fact, when she rearranges the stories to fit her own ideas. She uses any toy that she can find to match the personalities. Right now she's playing with Olivia and a random cat and dog. (Kate: "Mom, do you mind if we imagine this Olivia's house? You don't have to be a pig, no one has to be a pig, she just lives here.")

Gosh, I love this. In all my years of yearning to be a mom, I didn't know how cool it can be when your kid takes you on a journey in her imagination.

She watches more tv than I thought I'd let her before I became her mom! It serves to fuel her imagination though, that makes it less bad, right? (Note the tv reflection in her eyes in the photo below!)

Dinosaurs, one of Kate's favorite subjects. As I'm typing this she's sitting next to me, playing a dinosaur game on the computer while wearing a dinosaur t-shirt from the Field Museum.

She has a LOT of dinosaurs and animals (as shown in the second photo of this post. They need a landscape. We did one awhile ago, but it got ripped. Regular art paper didn't really stand up to frequent trampling by dinosaurs and more current animals. She made a new one with her brother Danny, that got peed on by the dog (oops).

We used heavy duty water color board this time, which I later covered with duralar so it'll last longer.

It's a fun art project that we did together. She's painted some landscapes since then. I love how she still uses the entire piece of paper, even when it's really big.

Since she was little I've been singing my own version of Brahm's lullaby for Kate. I'd hate to forget, so here it goes:

Go to sleep, go to sleep
Little Kate go to sleep
It is time to go to bed
And get some rest
It is time to close your eyes
And say your good nights
It is time to close your eyes
And go beddy bye bye.

Poetry it isn't, but it's all ours :-)

We had been trying to get to the Big Run Wolf Ranch this summer, and never managed to make it. Yesterday (with Kate's friend Jack and his mom) we finally did.

It's hard for a 4 year old to focus on people talking about animals for longer than a few minutes. So we got to hear lots of whining from the kids. They did love the horse back ride though, and the hot dogs.

Juno the wolf:

What I think is a muscovy duck:

Kate got to sit on a horse (it makes her very happy):

Kate has been figuring out family relationships. She's also been talking about when she'll be having babies. There's going to be a boy and a girl. Once in awhile she comes up with fun and funky names for her offspring too. (Soosha for a girl for instance).

Yesterday while driving to pick up her big brothers from school she was having the babies talk again. Then she asked me the question: "Mom, how do they come out?".

The answer I gave her that babies come out of the birth canal and that mommies' bodies change to allow the baby to come out. She asked: "They don't just jump out of your belly?". "No, Kate, they don't just jump out.". She didn't have any more questions at that time.

It turned into body painting.ﾠ I'd anticipated that, so Kate was in her bathing suit.ﾠ After that she played on the slip'n slide, just to wash the paint out.

I'm debuting a watermark on my photos.ﾠ I don't want to be pretentious but really wouldn't like it if someone appropriated my photos for some other kind of use.ﾠ It's happened.

Four bottles of finger paint may not have been enough.

Rolling around, jumping up and sliding on paint ...

She didn't want privacy while going potty today.ﾠ It was going to be awhile, so we chatted.

Kate: "Mom, remember when I was a baby in your belly and I used to kick you?"ﾠ

Me: "Yes, I remember, and I loved that."

Kate: "Mom, I played with K. and Z. today. I'm going to marry Z., but he said he doesn't want to marry me."

Me: "That's okay, he doesn't have to if he doesn't want to".

Kate: "I can marry J. and we can have babies."

Me: "That might work, I think you and J. would have beautiful babies." (I'm telling you, they'd be super cute those kids.)

Kate: "Mohom, boys don't have babies."

Me: "Sure they do, they don't carry them in their bellies, but they are just as much their babies too.ﾠ You're as much daddies baby as you are mine."

We discussed how many babies she'dﾠ have (a boy and a girl). We talked about what babies eat. At which point I indoctrinate her and tell her little babies should only have nursies and not bottles. I hope it sticks :-)

Me: "Are you done yet?"

Kate: "I've been done a long time already!"

I love having these conversations with my favorite girl!

Kate?ﾠ
Kate: I want to see Timothy again.

Timothy was the chef who cooked dinner at the table at Fuji Restaurant in Orland Park last week.ﾠ She ate just a few bites of chicken.ﾠ It was delicious, she said, but that was all she ate.ﾠ Timothy was her own chef, and way better than the other chef, she though.