Ella's "all natural" art

L's been on a real kick this last week or so. She's been creating some interesting "art work" out of mud every single day. She takes it quite seriously too. She creates these concoctions, er.... works of art, every morning and they dry in the sun during her nap (yep, six years old and still takes an hour nap every day! How lucky am I?!). She claims to dream about them during her sleep and then is up and out the door when she wakes up, barely taking the time to put her pants on!

Our friend Simon, who works for us twice a week, showed her how to mix the right amount of sand and dirt together in order to build a house, etc. I'm amazed that she can actually do it without getting covered in mud!

Proudly exhibiting some of her creations

She's now putting hand, foot and paw prints in them

I think she's making pancakes here

Ella has been playing a lot lately and it's been fun to see. She has always been a player but never really with toys. It took her two whole weeks after she came home at three years old to ever even play with toys and then she'd usually just stuff them in a bag and tote them around. She carried a piece of chalk around in a sardine can for the longest time and that was it! Or she'd take the hobby horse and pretend it was a weed eater. Her play was usually trying to imitate things that big people did but never really involved a lot of imagination.

Ella's always had a lot of really nice, fun toys that she just didn't really play with (other than to stuff in a bag) until now. And it seems like now she's trying to make up for lost time! She's up at the butt crack of dawn and gets right to work playing with her toys. She gets her little people and toy dogs and creates Dog Whisperer episodes (it's great to see all the different looks she comes up with for poor old Cesar!), her little Polly pockets drive around in their car with their dogs and cat having adventures and it's just been great to see her using her imagination and playing with her toys! Or creating things out of mud outside.

I've read that playing is really important to a young child's development and being as Ella was deprived of a lot of opportunities to play the first three years of her life, I'm letting her play as much as she wants to now. Yes, she'll learn to read, write better and do arithmatic but for now I'm letting the kid PLAY!

I guess it doesn't take a lot to make me happy and proud - my kid is six years old, playing with her toys and mud and I am delighted! I think that if I had biological children I'd take little things like this for granted. Having children "with pasts" forces you to take nothing for granted! Even things as simple as playing with toys and mud :)