making things up

With his favorite "friend", the wrinkle-faced dog

With a baby brother in the house who has had his share of sleeping/eating challenges, Jude has learned well how to entertain himself. He has been gravitating toward playing with some odd objects that aren't really toys. I love this, and also find his choices amusing. The pinto beans pictured here are one example, though I kind of started that one off. Usually, he comes up with his own ideas. Here are a few of them:

Beans in a box = hours of fun

1. Suet holder - he finds the thingy we use to hold bird suet lying around in the backyard and carries it around for hours, pretending it's a cage. Sometimes he jails a small stuffed animal, and other times he pretends he or someone else in the family is stuck in the cage. Only the "zookeeper" (his term) can let anyone out. And guess who the zookeeper is...
2. Plastic tweezers from his bug-finding kit - he uses this tiny, neon-green tweezers to "cut the grass". Blade by blade of course, a painstaking, time-consuming activity that I approve of when I really need to get something done.
3. The comforter off of his bed - he drags it downstairs almost every morning, along with his "cozy blankie" and a few of his stuffed "friends", and hides underneath this enormous pile of bedding in the middle of the living room. I occasionally need to find him by request - when he is the Big Bad Wolf and wants to "rarr" at me - but often he is content just to lie under there for awhile.
4. The tubing from my breast pump - he uses it to whip things. We've discussed how it isn't appropriate to beat people in this way, but if he wants to whip the wall, his easel, or a stuffed animal once in awhile, whatevs. (He has recently gotten into the concept of destruction.)
5. The string from his wooden top - he wraps it around the wheels of his cars, dangles it down inside of his marble track, and anything else he can think of. 
6. A snorkel - the other day, I found him putting puzzle pieces inside his snorkeling tube and fishing them out with the cord from our laptop. Anything he can stick inside of something else, and then use another object to try and ream it out of there, is gold to him.

 

Reading kiddie mags in his private corner

He likes to pretend, especially if someone will role-play with him, but this gets old for me and for his dad *real* fast. I have a strong preference for hide-and-seek, tickling/wrestling, and other such things... since pretending with Jude usually means he orchestrates my every move. Within seconds, I'm bored. Another reason to hope Theo will soon be old enough for more extensive sibling interaction. He's a lucky boy having Jude as his big brother, but I already feel for him when it comes to the gazillion different ways in which Jude will justify bossing him around.

Anyway, I enjoy learning how his mind works through observing this behavior with inanimate objects, and noticing the sorts of pretend worlds that appeal to him. I like his creative mind, and we don't need to spend a dime to keep him entertained.