What An Imagination

I sit in awe of my daughter's huge imagination. She has spent the majority of her day making a map of planets. These include shape planet, chocolate planet (my favorite), river planet, pencil planet, and robot butterfly planet to name just a few. Now it is time to build our spaceship. Unfortunately, Katie does not think that this is just make believe. She really thinks we're heading for space. The spaceship is going to be built from the vacuum cleaner, our computer, and a special cord to plug it in. Then we'll stick some fire underneath it and we're off! It will take 10, no 100 minutes to get into space! This, of course, because 100 is the largest number that Katie knows.

So I sit down with Katie and tell her that going into space is fun, but that it's just make believe. She almost burst into tears. I state to her that only astronauts can go into space. She told me that she was an astronaut. I announce that if she wants to be an astronaut, she'll have to do well in school and learn all about space. I asked her what planet we live on. She said, "the one where we are." I asked her what other planets are in our solar system and she began naming some of her pretend planets.

Katie's sitting in front of the TV with a blank look on her face while watching A Night at the Opera. I may have killed her fantasy of flying into space. I sure hope not. She'll just find another fantasy land to live in. The joys of preschool.