night animal.

We took a side off of Evelyn's crib a week or so ago to convert into a "big girl" bed, and so far the outcome has been what we expected. There's a good hour of playtime involved before she actually falls asleep. A few minutes after we close the door, we can hear her dollhouse being dragged out of the corner and to the middle of the floor. The clank of horses hooves can be heard as she is meticulously forming them into a line. Every now and then she'll mutter a key phrase that Jared and I have been saying lately from one animal to another (this can be funny or sad to see what she picks up. For me it's "mom says, don't, don't, don't, don't!" and Jared it's a funny "hey, what's going on you kids!"). Curiosity sometimes gets the best of me, and I try to sneakily open the door to a crack, but she always darts her eyes toward me and usually give me a look of "uh-oh, I've been caught!" But on this particular night I was actually delighted to see her imagination sprouting and brought the camera in to film her a bit. After I "interviewed" her about her set-up, she wanted me to take pictures of each animal. After snapping a few shots, I turned to walk out the door. I decided this time not to tell her to pick up her toys and jump back in to bed and threaten to put the crib side back up. Just this once ;) She looked like she was in the middle of something far too enchanting.