Let's Pretend...

Cole's imagination has exploded recently, and we're knee-deep in a weird soup of pretend games and new ideas.

He likes to create very, very specific scenarios, and have us play them out. This morning, for example, I heard him ask Josh to play hiking.

"Dad, let's pretend we're hiking and you're the man and I'll be the boy and you go in front and wear a hat. And then I'll go with you on the mountain and I'll have a stick."

Like I said, very specific.

But my all-time favorite is a game he invented in the car last week. We were driving along, and he was sitting in his carseat, staring out the window, when all of a sudden he piped up, "Mom, let's pretend we don't watch Caillou."


Caillou, for the uninitiated, is a cartoon about a little preschool boy with a bald head. It's very sweet--he usually does something wrong (rips a library book, won't share with his sister, etc.) and then learns a lesson. Cole watches it once in awhile, but it's not like Blue's Clues or Scooby Doo. It's never really come up before.

But there he was in the car, insisting, "Ok, mom? Let's pretend we don't watch Caillou."

"Um, ok," I responded. "We, uh, don't watch Caillou."

"No, we don't watch Caillou," he agreed, shaking his head happily. "We don't watch that show."

"No, we don't like that show," I continued, getting into it. "That show is boring."

"Caillou is a terrible show," Josh chimed in.

"Yeah, we never like that show," Cole said, beaming now. "We never would watch it and we don't like it."

And that was the end of that game.

Until yesterday in the car, when out of the blue, he said, "Dad, let's play the 'we don't watch Caillou' game."

This is the funniest age.