Monday, February 25, 2008

Happy Birthday Sara!

"I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution." -Albert Einstein

I know that imaginative play is good for kids. But there have been times that she gets so deeply involved in something that I start to wonder, and I forget actually how good it is for my kid. I mean come on, how am I supposed to walk around the imaginary schoolbus with all the children and animals and friendly monsters inside if I can't see where it's going? And for that matter, what's my child's name today??? Is she even human!? Because there are a lot of days that she spends very little time being herself; instead she's a pirate or a princess or a crocodile.... the list goes on. The other morning I was pretty grumpy and something she was doing just downright annoyed me, then I got a call from my wonderful mother. "Turn on your NPR station!" I couldn't at the moment, and I don't think our local NPR stations play the same programs at the same times, but I found the article on their website including a link to listen to a recording of the broadcast. The report was on one particular benefit of imaginative play; self-regulation and discipline. Awesome. I started to remember how wonderfully the Peach's mind is growing with all this creativity and how necessary it is for her development in general. Perfect timing too, thanks mom! I've been re-motivated to not only tolerate all the invisible beings and structures in my home, but to have fun with and encourage it.

So without further ado, Happy Birthday, Sara!!! Sara is turning four.

Sara is one of the Peach's best friends, so we hosted her birthday party at our house. Sara likes strawberry cake with chocolate frosting. Mmm. Sara is imaginary, obviously. The gold sparkly thing next to the cake is a wood (wooden?) vase with a pair of kitchen tongs stuck in it and a gold ribbon wrapped around the top of them a bouquet of flowers for the birthday girl.

"Your imagination, my dear fellow, is worth more than you imagine." -Louis Aragon

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