Thursday, October 23, 2008

Play imitating life


Every morning Caelan and I go through the same ritual.

We get out into the kitchen, where he proceeds to give me breakfast bowls for himself and Elisha, then bowls for mummy and daddy, and lastly mugs for 'daddy coffee' and 'mummy coffee'.

We then raid the fridge, and I get his breakfast ready. Following this, I prime the espresso machine and make the 'daddy and mummy coffee'. Morning after morning, as sunrise follows sunrise, he sits at his place at the table eating his three Weetbix, and watching the thick, creamy dark lines of coffee running through the machine, and dribbling into the beaker below.

The last few nights at bathtime he has taken to making his own 'coffee'. He has discovered that the turtle he plays with has a small hole in the middle of its back, and that if you turn it upside down and pour water into the shell it will run through into the cup below just like daddy's coffee machine.

And so we have our two-year-old making espressos at bathtime. As parents we continue to marvel at the way a young mind watches and assimilates patterns, and then finds creative expression for them in play. Playful but oh so imaginative!

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