Mothering a Two-Year-Old: Imagination

Peanut Butters and The Drive Through


Children’s growing imagination never really ceases to amaze me. It starts so small, and turns into this massive monster of a thing with never ending potential. Now I’m not really talking about pretending to feed a stuffed animal, or making noises when “driving” a toy car. To me these don’t seem to be TRUE pretend. Zach’s been doing these things for quite some time now, but it always seemed to me more like he was “practicing” for the real world, or parroting what he’d seen or heard someone else do before rather than doing any real make-believing of his own.

The first time my son really played pretend was with his grandmother. She gave him an empty box of gum to play with. He opened it, looked inside, and then looked back at her confused, since it was empty. She showed him how to “pour” the candy into her hand, and then she pretended to eat it. “Yum yum!” she said. His little eyes lit up and for the next 4 hours the only game he wanted to play was “Zach the Candy Man”.
But recently, my son used his imagination in such a way that not only got me laughing, it made me truly remember what it was like to be a kid and have the whole world at the beck and call of my imagination.
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One morning not too long ago, I woke up and skipped merrily down the hall to get my son out of bed (Haha! What a joke! Skipping merrily as soon as my feet hit the floor! Whew, I slay myself!). Zach greets me with a hearty “Good morning Mama!” and jumps out of bed, dragging his Teddy along with him. I gave him a hug, and we began our morning routine.

“Zachy, are you hungry?”

“No.” He says with all sincerity and honesty. Now this is odd for him because he’s normally putting in his order for breakfast just about as soon as I open the door to his room. So I ask again.

“Baby, do you want some breakfast?”

“No.” Hmm… baffling. I decided to try one last time.

“You aren’t hungry? Really?”

“No!” He gives me that impish little grin I love so much – that grin that’s cute now but when he’s 8 will tell me I’m about to have to clean up a mess or provide stitches to someone.

“Ok,” I say, and I stand up to leave the room. But I’m stopped by his little hands tugging on my shirt.

“Mama, Teddy needs a peanut butter!” Teddy? Really?

“You mean You want a peanut butter?”

“No! Teddy needs a peanut butter!” Haha! How cute! He was dead serious about it too. No joking or fooling around. Zachy didn’t need breakfast, but Teddy was starving for a peanut butter sandwich. So off to the kitchen we go. As we arrive in my beautiful (cough) 70’s styled floral kitchen, I asked one last time if Zach was sure he wasn’t hungry. Sure enough, he was not, thank you very much, but if I didn’t get Teddy a sandwich right then his spleen was going to eat his liver!

“Haha. Ok, go put him in your high chair.” Zachy’s eyes just lit up like fireworks in July!

“Teddy! Come sit! Sit in a chair Teddy! Eat a peanut butter!” As I got the supplies and began forming the glorious breakfast sandwich, I watched as he ran over and carefully made sure Teddy could sit up by himself, and pushed the chair up to the table just as I do for him every morning all the while talking to Teddy about the tasty “peanut butters” headed his way. Then he came back over to me.

“Is it ready?”

“Yes baby. Here you go.” He high-tailed it back to the high chair.

First he tried to put it in Teddy’s paw. “Eat teddy! Eat your peanut butter! Yum yum!” But Teddy wasn’t eating. “Eat teddy!” he insisted, putting it up to his nose. I of course took full advantage of this moment of cuteness to capture some video on my phone and send it to my mom. But then, it got even better. Since Teddy obviously wasn’t enjoying the sandwich as much as Zach thought he should have, he turned to me with a solution.

“Mama, Teddy needs peanut butter and ketchup!”

I really thought I was going to die laughing. “Baby, I don’t think teddy is hungry, why don’t you eat his peanut butter for him?”

“OK Mama!!”
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The further we get into the “two’s” of life, the more and more I see my son’s mind come alive. For instance, he has a toy that he can push around a bit like a stroller, but it can be collapsed into something that he can sit and scoot on. After letting him “drive” the car one day while I was cleaning it, he began turning the “stroller” toy over and sitting on it sideways so he could have a “wheel” to steer! He got even more creative one day by asking me where the keys for it were. I gave him a set of spares, watched him put them into an imaginary ignition, turn them, then take off to his room. He must have learned this all on our last road trip, because as soon as he got to him room, I heard him tell my brother, “Uncle Alan? I drive, you go to sleep!”

But this next story really takes the cake for me.
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We spent some time up in the mountains on our recent trip to see my family this summer. The altitude was messing with him a little bit and he’d been fussy all day. In an attempt to keep him occupied and quite while my dad finished grilling hot-dogs on the tailgate of our pickup, I let him sit in my lap, and “drive” – a game that is definitely on his top 3 list of games to play.

So there he sat in my lap, door open, pushing buttons. He turned the lights on, I turned them off. He moved the dials on the radio and I worked to make sure he didn’t find the horn or pull us out of park. Then he’d go for the lights again. On and off. On and off.

Suddenly he leans out the door and starts yelling. It sounded at first like he was saying “Someone need a jacket!” But we’re in the mountains and the sun is going down, so I figure he’s just parroting something he’s heard before. Back to driving and buttons, then he says it again, only this time I hear something a little different.

“Needs a jacket and French fries!”

And if you aren’t laughing now, you will when you realize he’s ordering fast food.

“Need a chickens, and fries, and hasburgs, and fries. Okay? Okay.” Then he actually turned toward the steering wheel to pull up to the window!
This continued for a few minutes. I called my mom and sisters over and told them what was going on. We had a good laugh, then they went on to finish putting together our dinner.

Zach turned to me. “Mama? A chickens? And fries? A mo ba singa?” (From here on out, if it doesn’t make sense, it’s just baby gibberish even his mama didn’t understand).

“Sure baby,” I tell him. “Mama wants chickens.”

“And fries? Saclmeasic?”

“Yeah, and fries.”

“Ama grewring?”

“Sure baby! And a coke.”

“Oh, Okay!” He turned back to his imaginary order taker.

“And a coke!!”
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Every day I see it grow. His little mind takes flight in new ways that keep me on my toes daily. And as I watch him learn and make believe in his own little world, I remember what it was like to be that imaginative. I sigh with joy, and then remind myself of something…

It’s fast food and peanut butters today, but next it’s going to be Superman and Flying, and that’s gonna be a whole new level of fun!