"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!)

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 :-)

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!

We have a thing going, in our house. When mommy uses a bad word, she has to give Kate a present. When Kate uses a bad word, she loses a toy for awhile. It's worked really well with her. I haven't heard many bad things come out of her mouth lately.

I really want to be better at cleaning up my language, so I take this arrangement seriously.

This morning, Kate asked me if I just could call her stupid. Huh? I raise my eyebrows, wondering .... "So you can buy me a present." she says.

She has enough toys.

We're in the car, on the way, running errands. At an intersection close to our house, I stop. It's a four way intersection, with 4 stop signs. The person coming from the left seems to have no idea. This is a situation in which I have little or no patience. This is when the bad language comes out, at times. Even though the situation is not bad, I'm not in danger, just annoyed, bad Wilma shows up and says: "What are you waiting for, you moron." (I'm not proud of myself, okay?)

Kate has a comment from the back seat: "Oh man, I wish I would grow up so that I could say that word."

I laughed, cracked up completely, had to call daddy to share this latest entry from wisecracking Kate.

This is going to be tagged under "Things to remember". Sometimes she surprises me with her grasp on things, on life.

Kate and I were talking about Oma. I bring her up from time to time. It saddens me that she'll barely remember Oma, who loved her so very much. She knows Oma died and what that means. She knows I miss my mom, and she misses Oma too. Of course she also misses Opa. After living with him for 2 months last year when my mom died, she's really gotten to know him.

As we were talking, she told me that Opa is the most sad, since he's all alone in his house. We'd talked about that before. Then she added "I hope someone looks out for him." That melted my heart, and of course I told her that Tante Jo Jo comes to Opa's house often and that her two other tantes come and check on him too.

I hope this means she's growing into a considerate and caring person. Quite often we get to "enjoy" her bossy and demanding side, which comes with the territory of being three.

She's also been great and wonderful at expressing gratitude for all sorts of things. She wanted me to call Opa to thank him for sending us Hagelslag. She often remember to say thank you for her bath, a toy, chocolate milk. The gratitude is expressed so sweetly in her voice.

Those are the times I feel so insanely lucky to be her mom.

Kate loves her sleepovers. Technically they're not really a sleepover, but it'll do for her.

A sleepover in our house means that all three kids are sleeping together in one room. They've slept in each of the kids' rooms so far. The latest and greatest is sleeping in the basement together. Our basement is unfinished, which adds to the coolness of the event.

They play, watch a movie, and one by one nod off to sleep. It means that Alex and Dan end up watching a movie that's Kate rated and not their usual fare.

Last time Kate ended up having her first night time accident, in the big bed she was sharing with her brother Dan. The poor kid dragged himself up two flights of stairs to finish his night time rest in a dry bed. Kate had to be washed and redressed to finish her night.

Kate's brothers are the best, they love her so much, she's very lucky. I'm glad they're not too cool to hang with baby sis.

Kate's going through some kind of developmental spurt. Suddenly she is trying foods that she hasn't put in her mouth before. Can you imagine a toddler not wanting to even try cinnamon rolls? Her best friend Jack loves ribs, Kate refused to even touch them. Yesterday, at least she tried.

Today she wanted to help me with the preparation for the soup. She loved pressing the button on the food processor. In the past she'd asked for celery before (those Wonder Pets, you know?). Today she asked it again, and I replied that she'd not liked it before. She wanted it anyway and munched down to large pieces, go figure?

During dinner (where she did great with the Dutch vegetable soup) she started reciting whole scenes from Alvin and the Chipmunks.

"Let's talk about your song Dave .... " "... it sucks, who's gonna sing it? Justin? Fergie?"

She remembers more than I do, probably because she's seen the movie about 30 times. She has also been watching Kung Fu Panda, and is pretending to be Tigress, complete with kicking her legs up in the air, oh joy :-)

(I'm loving this.)