Where'sBucee?

Totgirl's imaginative play is growing by leaps and bounds. She uses her imagination to pretend things are different things, like sitting on the slide and pretending it's a train. She now has imaginary friends; Her BFF at school is Saige right now and at home she has an imaginary Saige, who she at times refers to as 'pretend Saige.' One thing I love about imaginary friends is that they involve less mess. Not that I am a clean freak; I lost all ability to even attempt cleaning once I had my kids. A friend once pointed out that cleaning when you have kids is like shoveling when it is snowing. So.Very.True. So, I do the minimum, which, much like credit card debt, when you 'do' the minimum, it just continues to grow...and grow....and grow. But, I'm okay with this, for now...

Oh, but moving on back to the less of a mess idea with the imaginary friends. Now when she plays preschool, she has her imaginary friends with her. Before, she would use her (naked)babydolls as the friends. This meant setting out all twentysomething of them all over with blankets and stuffed animals and plates and cups and...well you get the idea. Now that her friends are imaginary, they also have imaginary blankets and stuffed animals and plates and cups and...well you get the idea. LOVE IT! House is still messy, but at least I am not folding 40 blankets 40 times throughout the day, putting away stuffed animals and (naked)babydolls and, well...you get the idea!

So, who is Bucee? Yesterday she was playing outside and had her totsize stroller, which looked empty, but, as she pointed out, she had her baby in it. She was taking care of her baby, sending it down the slide, putting it in the swing. I go inside and come back out and now she has replaced the imaginary baby in the stroller with a random 4 inch baby rattle yellow critter thing that can hang from the car seat bar.

I ask who that is and she says, 'That my baby.'
'Oh, and what is your baby's name?'
'B...B...Bucee!' 
'(Perplexed)Bucee? (Supportive)Oh...Bucee!' What a pretty name.

Up until now she has not really named anything. She has used different familiar names or versions of names, but always associated to something she was relating to her in her immediate environment at the time. When she was practicing her role as a big sister and being mommy to her little brother, she was also figuring out peer relationships and would refer to her BFF JoJo in everything she did. So, everything was JoJo; She named rocks JoJo, stuffed animals were JoJo, dolls were either JoJo or JoJo's babybrother or even JoJo's Mommy. Totgirl saw JoJo as being her secret source of power and control. If you wanted her to do something she didn't want to, she would scream some random thing about JoJo, 'Nooooo. I take care of JoJo. I no nap. JoJo nap.' (Oh, okay totgirl.) And, best of all, you never knew who or what was JoJo at that time. So, we were constantly in trouble for disrupting JoJo the rock, the doll, the ball....the whatever.

So, Bucee, is the first time she has come up with a name on her own. Where she got Bucee, I don't know. I would venture to say she has not heard the name Bucee before. So, now that she had named this random 4 inch baby rattle yellow critter thing that can hang from the car seat bar, she decided she has an increased attachment to it; Got busy swaddling it, taking it to bath and of course to bed. In the middle of the night, I kid you not, the girl shot up in bed from what I think was a sound sleep and yelled, 'WHERE'SSSSS BUCEE?' She has continued to take care of 'Bucee' this morning and even had 'Bucee' in her tummy. So, for today, we now have a 'Bucee' in the house....to some it might look like a random 4 inch baby rattle yellow critter thing that can hang from the car seat bar, but to totgirl, it is her veryownbabyBucee!