Imagination is a wonderful thing

Last night at dinner A-chan startled us by announcing that she was riding a dragon. She even swayed in her chair as though she were riding. When asked she proceeded to describe the dragon as green and white, big and flying through the air. Ketu asked if the dragon had a saddle for her to ride on like a horse does. She gave him a disbelieving glare and repeated, "It's a DRAgon!" I asked if she had given the dragon a name. She looked down at the floor for a second and the pronounced, "Name is Ember." Our cat Ember had just happened to be walking past her chair, lol. Needless to say we were delighted! We wondered a bit if she was copying a movie or had just made it up herself, and couldn't think of any movie with a flying dragon in it that she might have seen. (We are extremely particular about what videos she gets to see, so we're pretty sure we can remember them all...)

Then tonight at dinner she again announced that she was riding a dragon. This one was blue and red and white. We are completely amazed by how much imagination she already has. I can't wait to see how it develops as she grows! It will be interesting to see if there is a different dragon tomorrow night. And although I think the whole thing is exteremely cool, I do kind of wish that the dragons would wait until after dinner to take my girl on a ride. She really doesn't do much eating while she is riding her imaginary dragons!

It occurs to me that her increasing interaction at the dinner table is probably caused by the fact that we do actually eat at the table now. This is something that has happened only twice before in our entire married life...we usually would eat at trays in front of a video. But A-chan refused to take a bite while the video was on and eventually we decided to try the 'big table'. We've been doing this consistently now for about two weeks, I guess, and there has been a pretty marked difference in our girl's demeanor and her eating after this change. It's amazing how much the tv can suck your brain away and it's also amazing how liberating it can be to take some time and eat together at the dinner table. I have to admit, though, that I do sometimes miss being able to watch a video while we eat. There are so many shows that I would like to watch but right now we only have time for maybe 2 hours of video a week plus a half hour of watching A-chan's videos after dinner.