Make Believe Games

I noticed the wheels of  our Little Tikes Explorer Wagon (if it sounds like an SUV, that's because it pretty much is) splitting a couple of weeks ago. I knew I had to order a new wagon, pronto! I also prayed that our old wagon would hold out a little longer while the new delivery arrived, and thank goodness it did. This is the best wagon to use if you are running a daycare in an apartment building. It's not cheap though. They are roughly $200, and they aren't particularly easy to assemble (not if there is a hammer and drill involved). But they are very good, solid wagons. The last one lasted me about 5 years, and keep in mind I was using it almost every single day, in all types of weather, and putting far too much weight into it (Noah and his buddies still like to load into it at times!) Anyway, all this leads to my main point here: we got a huge cardboard box to play with!

We used it as a car and a space ship. The kids performed puppet shows too. But most of all, we used it to play restaurant, which is one of their all-time favourite games. In the photo below, Leila patiently waits for her plastic meal to be served.

Here is our fashionista, Maryam. She is constantly trying on everyone's shoes, pants, and more recently, hats (she likes to accomplish more difficult feats before the simple ones).

We got the tents out this week.

Marcus enjoyed throwing all of the balls out of the holes in the tent....

And Maryam enjoyed putting them back in!

And here are some sneak peaks from the inside.

I love how you can see both Maryam and Marcus at the very end of the tunnel, in the photo below.

We did a paint activity this week.  I think the babies are very much ready for finger painting now. Even though there is also a lot of paint on Marcus, I could see that he was enjoying moving the paint around on his tray, and neither of the babes even attempted to eat it. Oh, what a glorious age when you can judge what is and what is not appropriate to eat! :)

This wild man was more into body painting!

The kids are ALWAYS playing make-believe. One of their favourite make-believe games (yes, even higher on the list than "restaurant") is to pretend to travel. It is usually by car that they travel, but sometimes we get Noah and Leila's little suitcases out and they pretend to go on an airplane. (Yet sometimes they forget to take a plane, like earlier this week when I heard Leila repeatedly asking, "Thomas, you want to walk our babies to Israel?")

I took these photos after Dea said, "Look me Cha!" (Look at me, Char.) There are so many things to show me during the course of the day, and this includes hugging the  suitcase handle! She is becoming more adorable by the day, I swear!

Speaking of adorable, I could barely restrain my gushing adoration when Thomas put on some pretend glasses that he brought from home. Omg, he looked like little Ralfie from "A Christmas Story".

And he just seemed so comfortable in them! He always loves his costumery. And I always tell him what a good actor he is (though this is usually more for something like when he throws himself down if someone slightly brushes past him while he is feeling grumpy.) He really is a highly intelligent and creative kid. But really, they all are in their own ways!

The departures area at Pearson can sometimes feel this disorderly and chaotic, so they are bang on, don't ya think?