Curious behavior....

I love to watch my children play – especially when they don’t know I’m watching. I love the dialogues, the interaction, the creativity without restraint. The times when they play peacefully together definitely seem few and far between; inevitably an argument or disagreement eventually erupts – but during those times when they do, I am reminded of how lucky I am to be their mother.

I’m amused by their behavior (well, when they’re being good, that is… there are certainly many times when their behavior is anything but amusing as well). I’m amazed by how many things they seem to inherently just “know” – without ever being taught or formally shown. Granted, a large part of it is based on mimicking what they’ve seen in others, but other elements come from somewhere deep inside – an inborn part of their personality.

My mother-in-law once asked if Emma, age 2, is becoming a tom boy because of her two other brothers, and the fact that they always want to play the stereotypical “boy” things…. No - She is such a girl! She’ll play cars & trucks, dinosaurs, and the like right along with them, but still, she is such a girl – interested in purses and dolls and pretty dresses, getting into my make-up and nail polish more times than I can count. Each of my children have teddy bears, but with my boys, their teddy is their “buddy;” whereas with Emma, it’s her “baby.” Every time her baby sister needs to be fed or burped, so does Emma’s teddy, White. (Emma gets her superior stuffed animal naming abilities from me, by the way… When I was little I had a stuffed animal parrot named “Brown Beak.”) We’ve gone through countless wipes when White’s imaginary diaper needs to be changed. (Despite our best efforts, she is not convinced that imaginary wipes or a burp cloth will do a fine job for a teddy bear that never has bowel movements). I’ve frequently gone to set Lyndi (the baby) in the bouncy chair or swing, only to find the seat already occupied by White…. Clearly, she is mimicking what she has seen me do.

So imagine my surprise when I went to pull something out of the freezer for dinner, and I saw this:
I can assure you that I have never put one of my children in the freezer, so I’m not sure where her thought processes were with this one, but it is amusing to me all the same. I’m just glad I made this discovery before bedtime, when the search for the beloved bedmates always begins…. because the freezer is the last place I would have thought to look!