Imagination, there's nothing quite like it!

I can't believe how much Ava is using her little imagination. It's growing by the day. It's mostly pretending to cook and eat different foods or playing baby (i.e. feeding, changing diapers, going for walks), but lately she has me cracking up.

We were in the car one day and she was eating some dried mango. She took a few bites and shouted "LION"! "ROAR"! I glanced back and she was holding up what was left of her mango with bites taken out of it and sure enough it looked like a lion's head with the mouth open! I didn't have a camera or I would have taken a picture of the mango.



She does this all the time now. Yesterday she took bites out of her mango and it happened to look like a "sip cup" and she pretended to drink from it.



Blows me away.



Today she drew a picture for me and as she drew each piece she told me what it was, with lots of detail, no prompting from me. You see, the right-side scribble image is a "water". Up in the left hand corner is a "bumble bee". Down at the bottom is a "frog reading a book". The oval shape over to the left is a "pear". Pretty impressive!

She's very also very good at making a connection with stories we read or things we talk about with real-world situations. For example, the other day she was eating a clementine. I was watching her lay out each. piece. of. clementine. one. at. a. time. She was saying something every time she did, but I wasn't getting it. Finally, I heard what she was saying, as she'd put each piece out, she'd say....

"crescent moon" and point

"crescent moon" and point

"crescent moon" and point

I couldn't believe that she made that connection! She knows a lot of shapes, but to see it in the "baby oranges" as she calls them, was too cute!