Make believe

What is it about little girls and playing dress-up?  Right now K is sitting in the middle of my living room floor surrounded by a menagerie of stuffed animals, and she's wearing her ladybug Halloween costume.  She is constantly asking to wear that or her Cinderella dress.  Someone gave her a box of Disney princess dress-up clothes for her birthday last year and it was a sad, sad day when I had to tell her that she's too big for them.  Literally.  In her mind, though, she is a petite three year old who can wear dainty skirts and ball gowns.

It's not even all about dressing up.  K's idol is Taylor Swift.  She knows every one of her songs by heart and often wears flowers in her hair and will sit at our piano and "play" while singing.  She'll even turn on the recessed light above her so she has a "spotlight".

I'm very thankful that my little girl has such a vivid imagination, although sometimes it gets tiring.  You have no idea how many times a day she will tell me, "I'm a unicorn.  What will you name her?"  One day she was watching a cartoon in which the little boy broke his arm.  I had the most awful time trying to convince K that her arm did NOT hurt and it most certainly wasn't broken.  She pretended so hard that she convinced herself and was literally crying because she was afraid her arm was broken.  Can anyone say drama queen?

J has a decent imagination, too, as evidenced by his LEGO obsession.  He will buy a LEGO set and speed through the instructions to build it according to specs.  After a while, though, he takes everything apart and comes up with his own creations, even going so far as to rearrange the body parts of all of his little LEGO guys.

It really makes me wonder if we are all gifted with vivid imaginations and creativity, but only certain people bring it to the forefront in their adult life?  I think about the ease at which songwriters write a melody and artists bring their creations to life.  I'm amazed when I think about inventions - how do you think up something that has never before existed?  I am a smart, competent, well-rounded individual, but I don't really have a creative bone in my body.  As a child, though, maybe I was just as delighted in dressing up and make-believe as the next person!