We are what we read...and watch

Like most children, my progeny have very active imaginations and great memories.  As a result, their play is often re-enacting or spinning off of something we have read or watched on a movie.

I read a lot to the kids and for a few months, we were working our way through the Laura Ingalls Wilder books.  We were almost through Little House on the Prairie when Kiddo1 had to go to the doctor.  When we came home, Kiddo2 kept asking "Did you see Dr. Tan?  What did Dr. Tan say?"  Dr. Tan was the doctor who came when the Ingalls family was sick.  Kiddo2 has some ants in his pants when we read, so I usually let him play quietly with a horse or car while Kiddo1 snuggles in for the story.  I didn't know just how much of the story Kiddo2 was taking in until that day.  Dr. Tan is a pretty obscure character but he remembered him two weeks later!

This past summer it rained and as always, a large mud puddle formed on the path to the pasture.  I sent the older kiddos out with Hubby while I got Kiddo3 dressed and out in her stroller.  When I came along Kiddos 1 and 2 had their shoes off, socks rolled up inside and their pants pulled up.  They were wading in the big puddle.  My first reaction was to chew them out for getting wet and dirty. But I swallowed that down and said, "Umm, what are you doing?"

Kiddo1 said, "We're being Laura and Mary and we're wading in Plum Creek!"

Kiddo 2 chimed in, "But there is no crab here!"

I couldn't do anything else but say, "Carry on, children.  Carry on!"

Right now we are almost through Charlotte's Web.  For the first four or so chapters, it's all about Wilbur.  Every couple of minutes, Kiddo2 would grab my cheek in his little hands and say "Mama!  Where's Charlotte?  What about Charlotte?"  He was very distressed that the book was called Charlotte's Web and there was no Charlotte.  He actually cheered when Charlotte dropped down from the barn door!

As you can see, we take our literature characters pretty seriously around here.

This past week, we discovered that Kiddo2 also takes his cowboy heros pretty seriously as well.  You remember the chaps?  He takes his cowboys SERIOUSLY.  When we moved to THE FARM, Grandma had a bunch of movies, one of them being "Rooster Cogburn" starring none other than John Wayne.  Kiddo2 loves to watch "Wooter", as he calls him.

The other day I came in from milking and found Kiddo2 sitting behind the recliner in the living room.  He had a Louis L'Amour novel in one hand (Radigan, to be exact), a piece of chalk held between his index and middle fingers, and he was bringing it to his lips every so often.  I've learned by now that I just have to stifle my initial "WHAT ARE YOU DOING???!!!" reaction and just calmly ask "Ummm, whatcha doin'?"

Kiddo2 replied (and I quote), "Oh, I'm just sitting here smokin' a fine cigar."

This, of course, is straight from the scene where "Wooter" is smoking a cigar and Katherine Hepburn asks him about it.  He proclaims the virtues of smoking a fine cigar and then she responds that "even God himself must smoke a fine cigar".

Proof, once again, that we are what we read...and watch!