The imagination of a child

I am a left-brained thinker.  I like numbers, order, details, and symmetry but find myself outsourcing anything requiring a great deal of craftiness.  While I greatly appreciate artistic design, I cannot create such works myself.  Even the craft time during MOPS meetings almost made me break out into cold sweats.

In contrast, I have a right-brained daughter who is forever digging through my supply drawers to create something other than the disorganized mess that follows her wherever she goes.  She loves making gifts without any supervision.  She made a journal for a friend yesterday using gift wrap, cardboard, tape, and paper.  She made me a charm bracelet out of pipe cleaners for Christmas one year.   The bracelet certainly won't be a best seller, but her creativity got an A+ in my book.

One day after a serious discussion about death and eternity, she came up with a way for her stuffed animals to visit their deceased parents in Heaven.  She hoped that these balloons would lift the animals high enough to reach Heaven.

Several years ago after receiving a Bible lesson on being watchful, she set up stuffed animals around the perimeter of her bed as a tangible reminder. She explained that these animals are keeping watch for her.

She really likes the decorative tassel I have hanging from the knob on our china cabinet door in our dining room. Perhaps she was thinking about that tassel when at age 3, she accessorized my file cabinets.  A 3-year old's taste in decorating is both creative and disturbing!    Does anyone else have kids who dismembered their dolls for decorative purposes?

Early one December, the kids expressed a longing for snow.  When they grew weary of waiting for it to snow outside, my daughter suggested that they make it snow inside.  She threw her stuffed animal in the air and pronounced, "It's snowing cats and dogs!"

To amuse herself, she often resorts to turning common household items into fun toys.  She went through a phase of being fascinated by restaurants with drive-thru windows.  She wanted a fast food restaurant toy set so she could pretend she worked at the drive-thru window at McDonald's. So, she used the headphones from her Walkman as her headset.  She concocted her own cash register out of books, cardboard, and blocks, and she turned a book on its spine to serve as the bank/credit card reader.  She slid an old card through the pages as you would if paying by card at a checkout.

Yesterday, I woke up to the sounds of kids playing ping pong.  That's all well and good except for the fact that we don't own a ping pong table, paddles or a ping pong ball.  I came down to find the kids playing ping pong on the coffee table with a hollow golf ball and cardboard paddles they handcrafted themselves. A game box served as the net.

This afternoon, I found a chewed corn cob inside a bag lying on the DVD shelf in our recreation room.  What crazy idea motivated her to put THAT trash up THERE?  She's at a birthday party right now, but I can't wait until we go pick her up so I can get an explanation.  Does anyone have any guesses?  Whatever it is, I'm sure it will be creative!  At least she thought to put the corn in a sealed bag.