Lily: Mom, here is your menu so you can see what food we have at the restaurant. *hands me a wooden postcard from Melissa and Doug post office set*
Me: Thanks! Wow – it all sounds delicious. Do you have any sandwiches?
Lily: No… other people just ate them all.
Me: Oh. Ok. Do you have any fish?
Lily: No.
Me: Do you have any pizza?
Lily: No, we just put that away.
Me: How about some spaghetti?
Lily: I’m pretty sure a bird just ate it.
Me: Well, what do you have?
Lily: We have some real nice broccoli.
*Leaves room for several minutes. Can hear intense toy digging in the playroom. Returns with “tray” as pictured above.*
Lily: Great news – Pizza Hut called – they were able to make you some pizza. But the power is still out at Starbucks so I can’t get you a coffee until tomorrow.
Just sharing this little snippet from our day today to reinforce how ridiculously important (and amusing!) imaginative play can be for kids – and how entertaining it can be for us adults as well. 🙂