Halloween Pictures!

Dawn Harrison, an incredible amateur photographer who attends church with us at First United Methodist in Zephyrhills, was generous enough to share her talents (and cool new photography "toys") with the families of young children in the nursery. During Sunday School one weekend before Halloween, she instructed us all to bring our kids' costumes and brought her camera, tripod, and a large white sheet to the nursery.

The resulting mayhem may have intimidated a weaker soul, but Dawn has three young kids of her own and worked miracles among even the most obstinate of her models, lol! There were tears and yells, and even Quintin, who had been very excited about getting into his costume at every opportunity before that point, suddenly decided that he had better things to do ;-) Dawn got at least one great shot of each child, however, and then provided a choice of backgrounds for each one.

We loved each so much that it was hard to choose just one to post! I got wallet-sized pictures of Quintin with each background produced to glue inside of the invitations to Quintin's Toy Story themed third birthday party -- everyone got a different one, since I couldn't decide which I like best, lol!

Thank you, Dawn!

When I got the pictures developed, I passed those with the Toy Story characters superimposed on them to Quintin in the backseat, to look over while we drove home.

I could hear him chattering away for several blocks and then, suddenly, he burst into loud sobs. The change was alarming and I quickly pulled over, convinced that something quite terrible had happened back there.

When I asked frantically what the matter was, Quintin answered tearfully, "I want Buzz to be real!"

I babbled on about the differences between "real" and "pretend," (which he apparently already had a pretty good grasp of, lol) and said what I hoped were encouraging things about the importance of imaginary play. Quintin kept blurting out things like, "But I want him to really be next to me in the car!"

I got out and sat with him in the back seat, and we talked about what he would say to Buzz & what he hoped Buzz would say to him; eventually, he calmed down.

I love that Quintin has such a vivid imagination and have always enjoyed listening in on the intricate conversations he has with his toys (and they have among themselves), the sweet songs he makes up while he's playing, and the passionate way he works to involve us in his play ("Remember to ask the dinosaur what he wants for lunch, Mommy!").

I felt we were passing an important milestone that afternoon, but still can't nail down exactly what it was (The beginnings of concrete thinking? Or, the beginnings of abstract thinking?).

There was certainly a fragile sort of beauty in that moment -- so bittersweet and funny!

I guess there's some growth in the simple knowledge that as great as fantasy play can be, sometimes nothing takes the place of the real thing!