The many faces of Lea

Lea has become quite a good pretender. And as a creative person and dutiful mommy, I encourage pretending. From early on we played "pretend ball" as a way to play ball in the car and not cause accidents or drive Daddy crazy while driving (we do a good job driving him crazy other times.) So now with a little encouragement Lea has begun to play different characters, for lack of a better word.
Here is clown nose Lea. A light up clown nose we got at the circus. She enjoyed wearing that around the house for a day or two.



And Super Baby soon became Super Lea when she pointed out that she was not a baby. Super Lea (and occasionally Super Mommy) save the stuffed animals by moving them to the safety of the Elmo tent. Our pretend play does not yet have very complicated story lines, but that will come I'm sure. Especially considering how overly dramatic Lea can be. But for now saving the animals one by one is fun for us super heros.


And sometimes the cape is less super and more royal. While at grandma's over the weekend Daddy made Lea the best crown in the world. We found a royal Pooh bear cape for her majesty and and Princess Lea (Insert Star Wars joke here) was crowned. Lea would insist that Mommy put on the crown (although it is custom fit for Lea) and I did the ol' "elbow, elbow, wrist, wrist, wrist" wave and affected a queen mother voice that Lea seemed to love.



But mostly we pretend to be animals. One morning, seemingly out of the blue Lea asked me for a monkey tail. "Ok I thought, how fun, its monkey day!" So I made a monkey tail out of construction paper (reinforced with packing tape, but it still tore by lunch time — Its hard being a toddler's tail) and a nose with double stick tape. Then we went and found some dark socks for monkey paws. Dressing up seemed to be more fun that actually pretending to be a monkey. I don't think the monkey costume stayed on too long, but it was fun.



Then I came home last night after Aunt Teresa had been over all day. Teresa said "Did she show you how she can be a Turtle?" Well then Lea turns aournd and puts a pot lid on her back and waddled around the kitchen. Daddy helped when she got on all fours and she crawled around with the pot lid on. But watching her walk with both hands and the lid behind her back was hysterical! She is such a clown!

We played princess and the dragon last night, with out any dress-up and very little props. Lea has a fold out book that she put up and called the tower. Daddy was the dragon (who was told to be quiet by Princess Lea and then whispered, he was a funny quiet dragon). Mommy saved the princess by showing the Daddy Dragon play cookies and tossing them over his shoulder to distract him. Then Queen Mommy and Princess Lea rode away on the horse. And we all lived happily ever after (or at least until Princess Lea woke us up at 7:30 this morning).