Playing Pretend with Demon Baby

This child's look says it all. He lives life with imagination and mischief.

So last night, Demon Baby and I played "restaurant." He cooked. I was the food taster. He has a lot of plastic food, an apron, a few utensils, and a play stove. He cooked me an assortment of food.

"Taste!" he commanded.

"Delicious."

"Quantify. How many stars?"

"How many stars?"

"For your review?"

"Oh. Five stars. I quantify this as a five-star meal."

"I need a BILLION lady."

"Then you better cook more food."

He went about cooking even more gourmet meals.

He fed me.

"Now how many stars?"

"A hundred thousand." (I mean, if I had to get to a BILLION . . .)

"That's better."

He cooked more. I had to feign rapture over each dish. "Delicious! . . . My compliments to the chef."

"You need to eat faster."

"Why?"

"Before a bomb explodes in my restaurant and sends us all to smithereens." (Only Demon Baby would combine worldwide destruction and playing restaurant.)

"Um . . . that's not a nice thought."

"These are not nice aliens, lady."

So I ate faster. "I'm really getting FULL, chef," I said after about a half-hour.

"I have JUST the solution for situations like these."

"What?"

"Open your mouth."

"But I'm full."

"Just open your mouth."

He approached me with his tiny pretend dust-buster vacuum. He held it up to my mouth. "This device sucks all the food out of you so you can eat again. You won't be full in about one minute. Just hold still."

So he sucked out all the food. "How very Roman of you, Demon Baby."

"It's not Roman. We just need to finish all this food before the aliens destroy our planet. It would be a shame to waste a five-star meal."

Our New Game

I now must spend the majority of the day pretending I don't SEE Demon Baby.

"I'm invisible."

"Who's talking to me?"

"It's ME. You just can't see me."

So he chatters and shouts and squeals and chatters some more, all the while I am saying, "Gosh, I wish I knew where my child was." I look past him, over him, pretend to see THROUGH him.

He is CONVINCED he is invisible.

"Oh, well," I say, "I can't kiss a baby I can't see. That's too bad since I would really like to kiss my little Demon Baby."

I watch him out of the corner of my eye as he considers this.

"TA-DA! LOOK AT ME! I've been here all the time!!! I'm UNINVISIBLE again. You can see me!"

I kiss him.

He shuts his eyes. "I'm invisible again."

And so the game goes on. Invisible, uninvisible.

I get nothing done.

No writing.

Just this new game of the Incredible Invisible Demon Baby.

Moon Child

Demon Baby has one of the more extraordinary imaginations I have ever encountered. It is rich with dragons and monsters and swords and fighting. But also mystical elements.

Yesterday, Demon Baby said he was going to paint himself silver from head to toe. Then he was going to find a very tall ladder, go up into the sky and BE the moon for a few days.

I would never have thought up such a thing as a three-year-old . . . and it really makes me wonder about what great things he is going to do when he grows up.

Something New

Demon Baby is very smart. He speaks in very long, complex sentences, and uses all the little oddities of adults speech:

"Well, generally, I feel that . . . "

"Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of . . ."

"I could possibly see . . . "

Etc.

Not kidding. So we KNOW he's really smart. And we know, as a criminal mastermind, he is very clever. But all of a sudden, this imagination has emerged.

There are dragons everywhere. Monsters around every corner. Magic, flying things, secret sea creatures in the bathtub, and imaginary friends.

And with this? Has all of a sudden come some fears. I sent him into the family room yesterday while I made him lunch. The family room is connected to the kitchen, but it is dim in there until the afternoon.

"I can't go in there."

"Why?"

"It's scary."

"Why?"

"It's dark."

Then, I asked him to give a treat to the littlest of our dogs--a teeny thing about the size of a Jack Russell.

"I can't do that."

"Why?"

"That dog has scary teeth and she may swallow my arm."

Because he has raced through life unafraid of anything, this is new . . . but I also watch it developmentally. I see it with the emergence of the fantasy imagination--which he has an abundance of. His games and play time are so elaborate. I told him he just may end up a writer.