Sophie's big ideas

Sophie's imagination and vision are growing by leaps and bounds. Tonight she started us working on her vision of a family nativity play.

After dinner, Sophie was looking at pictures of the nativity and asked, "Dad, was the manger made out of wood?"
"Yes."
"Do we have any wood?"
"No, we don't really have any wood we could use."

Then she asks, "Could cardboard be a type of wood?"
Now I imagine trying to cut out and assemble a manger out of cardboard. Daunted and tired on a Friday evening, I ask, "Why don't we pretend the baby doll crib is a manger?"
Sophie gives me a look and says in a patient voice, "Dad, Jesus doesn't like the color pink."

We finally agree to cover the crib with brown construction paper and go downstairs to get started. As we're cutting and taping paper together, Elanor tries to help by finding a staple puller (I left the office drawer open) and ripping loose paper with it. Once the outside of the manger is done, Sophie says we need hay. There's only one piece of yellow construction paper, but she says its OK, because we can just color some white paper yellow. As we're cutting paper into strips for hay, Elanor finds a bag of googly eyes, presses one to her eye, and starts screaming, "I have a new eye! I have a new eye!".

During this whole process, Sophie is talking about the rest of the play. Elanor can be the angel and wear the butterfly wings, she will be Mary, and I can be Joseph. We talk about costumes (bathrobes, towels, etc) and then she thinks about animals. "Maybe my baby dolls can be the animals!" she says excitely. Then she muses, "Dad, do you think Mom can sew sheep costumes for my baby dolls?"

Finally it's time for bed, but Sophie is still talking about plans (now she's debating whether the playroom is an appropriate place to make a stable). I'm excited that she is using her imagination and thinking big, but I hope we can keep up with her!