Delivering the mail & duckies on a boat ride.

You know those "things" or "occurrences" around your house that are so unmistakeably an act of your children (or a really bizarre intruder)? Like.....my "fluffy" underwear (as Georgia calls them) always in her toy basket even though I repeatedly remove them and put them back in my underwear drawer, or my blush brush always showing up in her play kitchen because, according to her....it's a cupcake, or the lids to all of my rubber-maid containers never being in the cupboard because Georgia likes to take them and pretend they are computers.

I love those things.  I love those things because they are a little glimpse into an imagination that by thirty three so many of us have lost.  We're literal.  A blush brush can't be a cupcake--even though it looks uncannily like a big fat cupcake.  A rubber-maid lid a laptop?  When you put one on the floor and prop one up against the chest......it absolutely looks like a laptop.  And I love those things because they are Georgia to me. 

Sometimes when I find my fluffy under-wear, make-up brushes, my rubber-maid lids, my blue shoes, my sheets of stickers, my ironing spray bottle, or my bracelets in places I never put them I leave them there.  I leave them there because I feel a twinge of sadness on her behalf when she goes back to find them tomorrow and literal mommy has "put them away in their proper place." I leave them there because I live vicariously through her imagination.  I leave them there because in a few months she won't play that game anymore....it will be something new....and the little girl that she was is getting older and mommy is watching it happen with no control.  And practically, I leave them there because when you have a two year old with a photographic memory I know I'll have a lot of explaining to do if the bug is not in the mailbox when she goes to check for it tomorrow. 

I started documenting these things a while ago because I didn't want to forget them.  I wanted to soak up every little bit of that imagination and celebrate how her little mind works when I'm letting her play on her own.  See below..........(and I promise I did not put these things in these places for the sake of a picture--that would make me very odd and almost unstable).

This is where Baby B takes a nap....a lot....and sometimes her head almost comes off when I have to reef on the drawer to get it open because she makes it stick--and yet she is still sleeping peacefully in my sock drawer on most days. Luckily, for her, it's summer so my sock drawer doesn't get as much use and her naked naps are interrupted a lot less.   

These alphabet cards reside in my cabinet full of serving dishes on a full time basis.  There is a large slit where the door rests in it's frame that Georgia can push them through.  If you try to move them she yells in protest, "No!  That's the mailbox....you won't get your mail if you take that out of there." And I swear she checks this daily....because if I do remove them when she's not looking --- I'd bet my house that if I checked it not two hours later they'd be right back in there. 

This string of ducks makes the rounds.  This picture has them "taking a boat ride" in some shoes.  It feels good to confidently shove your feet into your shoes only to discover through a lot of sharp angles and pokes that some plastic ducks have taken up residence.  Although, I will take the ducks any day over the plastic fork that just about separated my toenail from it's bed last week. 

That's it.  Just a little bit of nostalgia on this rainy day.