Lavatory Mom, La-va-tory, Not Potty!

All day long Lucy asks me two questions, the first is, "Who will play with me?" Non-stop all day long. The second question is more of a command than question I guess, "Tell me a story." Over and over. Her entourage of imaginary friends is growing larger each day and last night Lucy told me to hold her imaginary five-year old baby that just came out of her tummy. The other day I asked her if she had to go potty and she corrected me and with great enunciation told me, "Mom, it is the lavatory!" - and then sounded out the word as if I had never heard it. Where does she come up with this stuff?

Since Lucy's school has ended for the summer we have lots of days and hours to fill with summer fun activities. She bounds out of bed in the morning asking, "Where are we going?" I do my best to pack our days with fun-filled activities. We go to the library, we go to the farm, we go to the spraypark, the playground - we go everywhere. I know that independent play has never been Lucy's strength, but if there is an extended period of time where I have to tend to other things than entertaining her, Lucy says, "Humph, who will play with me?" like a child who has been left for hours with nothing but a potato to play with. I almost feel like literally as the smoke dissipated from the birthday candles for Lucy's third birthday my little girl turned into a Mariah Carey-like diva.

Lucy's thirst for stories is like something I had never experienced. It all started with her asking for a story - any story. Next she would give me a topic for a story and I took it from there. The stories mostly revolved around friends, family and Lucy's adventures. I would tell her stories about the time she went to Disney with her cousins Pete, Henry and Charlie. Detailed stories about what rides they went on, who sat where, what they did after the Buzz Lightyear ride. She was beginning to need the specifics. These days Lucy will give me extraordinary circumstances as the basis for her stories. She makes up these scenarios about kind of scary things - things like, "Tell me a story about the time you didn't buckle me in and I fell out of the car." And then there is, "Tell me a story about the time we had a fire and everything got ruined." I usually try to steer the stories to a lighter topic - but if I don't comply completely Lucy gets pissed. I am guessing that these scary stories are a way to talk about fears. At least I hope it is - otherwise we are going to be paying for some serious couch time later.

Let's see, I think Goga was probably the first. I can't really recall when I first started hearing about Goga, probably around a year-or-so ago. There are some things about Goga that change with the day, but for the most part Goga is a girl older than Lucy that goes to preschool and has a baby brother named Josh and a mother named Carol. I think I know someone like that. Then Goga's friend Weeki started rearing his or her head. I probably know the least about Weeki, other than he or she hangs with Goga a lot of the time. Then Lucy stated talking about Katie the babysitter coming over. Now there is Anna. Lucy talks to her on my old cell phone quite a bit. Lucy is all broken up because Anna just moved to New York apparently. Oh, and many days it is Anna's birthday which requires multiple calls in which Lucy has to serenade her imaginary friend with Happy Birthday. It is difficult to keep them all straight, but the deep and involved stories are endlessly entertaining for Michael and I. Lucy is very aware that they are her imaginary friends and will tell us if we try to play along and say something like, "when is Katie coming over?" Lucy looks at us like we are crazy and tells us there are her imaginary friends and laughs at us.

Lucy's personality is so strong, her imagination is so vivid I am in awe of her. We explore, we go on adventures but it is hard to compete with whatever is swirling inside of her little head. I wonder if the world gets as much as a kick out of her as we do. She is exhausting but at the end of the day, kids in bed, I sit down after finishing up putting away the toys and books that have seemingly exploded and say to Michael, "so today, Lucy ..." and we re-tell Lucy's antics with a tired but happy smiles on our faces.