After breakfast yesterday Bella announces to me, “I’m going to take a shower.” She goes to her room and shuts the door.
When I take Sophie in a little later to change her diaper I find Bella has taken off her pjs and is sitting on the chair in her room with a white baby blankie wrapped around her hips. She is taking a cold shower, she informs me, as she pretends to adjust the spray.
I change Sophie and get her dressed then inform Bella it is time for her to get dressed too. She goes into the closet and shuts the door. When she emerges she moves to the bed, drops the white blankie and picks up a big fleecey blanket, which she tells me is her robe. She wraps herself in the fleece and then moves to open the cupboard of her play kitchen where she takes out a plastic can of something or other and announces, “I just have to shave.”
I played along and told her that after showering and shaving she needed to get dressed and have her hair done. Once I’d given in to her fantasy, she allowed herself to join in the process of getting dressed for the day.
Now I think we’ve got to go fight the getting dressed battle for today. Bella is currently running around the living room dressed in only a diaper, declaiming something or other at the top of her voice. I think it’s a “song” of her own composition about Pooh and Kanga, but I can’t really make out the words. it has a great rhythm, though. Very convincing as if there were a definite meter.
