Funny, enlightening day

I am always fascinated by the way kids take what we tell them and what they observe and make sense out of it all.

Today, Nellie decided first thing this morning that she wanted to play dress-up. This has never happened before, and I was shamefully unprepared. I let her pick out some of my jewelry, a pair of sandals with heels, then gave her a--well, let's just call it a nightie--to wear as a wedding dress, because she told me she wanted to pretend to get married.

(A small digression here. Just recently, Nellie has become more interested in girly things. She's been such good buddies with Kevin lately, she usually just talks about how much she loves hunting, asked for binoculars for her birthday, likes to investigate bugs and frogs, get dirty, etc. But more and more, Nellie wants to look at wedding pictures, watch the romantic scene in Aladdin, and play with this "big girl" doll that used to be Aunt Pam's when she was a little girl. Not a baby doll, mind you, because she is wearing underpants and that is the very definition of big girl.")

Well, the next thing I knew, she was stuffing a little monkey under her shirt and uttered the funniest, most shocking statement I have ever heard and had to NOT laugh at--

"I am getting married because I have a baby in my tummy and I need a fahver [father]."

She meant husband.

What I realized over the course of the day, since we played "pregnant" (what she called it) all day, was that she believes that all women give birth at their wedding. I am certain she thinks this because whenever she asks about how you get a baby in your tummy and so on, we tell her something like, "well, when you're a grown up you get married and then you can have a baby." I wasn't exactly sure how to approach this misconception, so I just kind of went with it. By the time Kevin came home she had three babies ("triblets") and was asking to play dress-up again tomorrow. Kevin said I should take her to Goodwill for some proper dress-up clothes.

This afternoon, I took out a small album of wedding photos to show Nellie. We looked through all the pictures and I explained every one. She asked if she was in my tummy at the wedding, and I told her that no, she wasn't born until a few years later. When we were done, she asked to read it again.

It was just a different kind of day--I had plenty to do, but I didn't particularly feel like doing any of it, so we just played all morning. The three of us, since Annie seems to be giving up her morning nap. My Little Ponies, "camping girls", and dress-up/pregnant. Who knows what we'll be playing tomorrow!