Real vs. Not Real (according to Mara)

I haven't posted just to post this year (and not part of Project 365), and I thought it was about time I did. Don't worry – I have pictures to post too, but I might wait another day or so and post several at once.

It seems like Mara has a pretty good sense of what is real and what is not real. We've never really made a big deal out of what's real and what's not except for when it comes to what she says she's afraid of.

Her current fear right now is the shadows in her room, and we can't tell her that shadows aren't real because, well, they are. :) Instead, we just say that she'll be fine and that we're here to protect her from whatever scares her. When I was putting her to bed the other night, I told her that her big whale would keep her safe while she slept, but she countered that he couldn't because he wasn't real. How can you argue with that?

When we were at the Heard Museum last weekend, she immediately knew that the dinosaurs were robots and not real. However, she still wanted to keep her distance from them most of the time.

Mara's sense of reality also came into play around Christmas. When I picked her up on the last day of school before Christmas, Mara told me that there's only one real Santa Claus. We thought she believed that the Santas at the mall and everywhere else were not real, but we didn't really say one way or another. Her statement right then confirmed it. We figure we might only get one more year of Santa out of that little girl. I'm not too surprised, though, since I figured it out at an early age too. But I still loved the spirit of Santa, which is what we will continue even after Mara doesn't believe.

I also thought I'd throw out another "Maraism" that she said recently. When she was taking a bath the other day, she said that there were "stuck-tion cups" on the bottom of her bathmat that kept the mat stuck to the bath.