One of the best parts of watching a toddler grow and develop, is watching the imagination take shape. Around the age of one, children start to imitate adults. They stir with big spoons in pots and pans, they hold phones up to their ears, and they "help" to sweep and vacuum around the house. As they get good at this grown-up imitation stuff, they begin to do it on their own. When Ty hit this stage, I would peek into the living room and see him taking clothes out of the laundry basket, *attempting* to fold them. At the dinner table, I'd look over and see him wiping up his place with a napkin. I watched him doing all of these "grown-up" activities, and wondered where our baby went, and when he became such an active participant in our household!
Nowadays though, Ty's imitation has transformed into imagination, and for me, this is by far the most fascinating stage to watch evolve. In the last few months, Ty has discovered his love for talking with family members on the phone or computer. Even when he is not talking to someone, he is "talking" to someone on any phone...fake or not...that he can get his hands on. Several times throughout the day, I will catch Ty in a deep conversation on his phone. He always answers the phone with an "a-woah" (hello), and then babbles away, real words sprinkled throughout his conversation, with true expression and inflection. Once in a while he will bust out in giggles, because apparently whoever he is speaking with is pretty funny. Most of the time, I will ask him who he is talking to on the phone, and it's never the same person. Sometimes it's "aut" (aunt) or "pat" (his uncle), other times it's "Lala" (his grandmother), or "Nonna eh Papa" (his grandmother and grandfather who he always names as a pair), and once in a while it's "dada" (if Dad isn't home). I think sometimes he is more amused by these pretend conversations than he is by real-life ones!
Watching him play cars is almost as entertaining as his phone conversations, too. Just like most two year old boys, Ty loves his cars. He gets excited to see different types of vehicles on the street...motorcycles, trucks, buses...and never misses an opportunity to point them out to us. When he is left to play on his own, it is usually with his cars, which he drives on different surfaces throughout the house. If you listen carefully, you'll hear the quiet "vroom vroom" sounds of the cars coming out of his little mouth, with the occasional loud bursts of "w-ash!" (crash!), "bop!" (stop!), and "oh!" (go!). This morning I watched as he played with a race car and tow truck on the kitchen floor. He was laying on his belly, carefully making one car follow the other on the "road". All of a sudden the race car backed up and flew full force into the back of the tow-truck as Ty yelled, "w-ash!" and laughed hysterically. To a two year old boy, this was a full-fledged event happening on the floor that he was fully absorbed with.
After his speech therapy session on Friday afternoon, his therapist Emily told me that she took out the dollhouse to work on imaginary play with Ty. To her surprise, he walked the little people all around the house (all of the men he called "papa"), "fed" them pretend food, and put one to bed as he signed "sleep". We do not have a dollhouse at home, and I'm pretty sure Ty has never played with little plastic people before, yet he created these little "scenes" using his imagination, all on his own. He never ceases to amaze me.
It's these little imaginary games that he plays that continually remind me how much he's grown this year. While I do catch glimpses into his imagination with the occasional words he uses while he plays, I can only guess how in-depth his mind goes. This is only the beginning of this exciting phase of his childhood, where his imagination is vivid and powerful. I truly look forward to watching his creativity continue to evolve, to see what sorts of adventures he can create on his own. Imagination is one of the most amazing gifts of childhood!
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