It's fun, each evening of a day when Julia's had preschool, to hear her recount the bits and pieces of the day. Today, most of those fragments centered on two different boys with whom she'd played at the kitchen, read books, and "acted silly." I'm sure all that was true. As we made our way through her bedtime routine, she started extrapolating in a very curious, center-of-the-universe way, claiming at different times that one of the boys is silly when he brushes his teeth "just like me" (though she's not silly at all then), that the other one was so "esscited" on preschool days (just like Julia), that one had a lot of "very interesting toys" including - of course - virtually all the same toys that Julia has. Hearing her talk about these two new friends, part of the Julia's "kids," I got the sense that she was pushing her imagination as far as she could to conceive of what the kids she's met at preschool must do during the 95% of the week when they're not in her company.
And speaking of pushing boundaries: today was the first time ever that Julia has gotten out of bed without one of her parents in the room. It's hard to believe, but true. She had to be awakened for preschool, so I opened her bedroom door and went to do something while she woke up. (Waking her up for preschool on Tuesday had kicked off a series of meltdowns, so we were trying to avoid that.) Not a minute later, there she was, ten feet tall and totally disheveled, walking up to me in her pajamas, proudly saying, "Daddy, I got up all by myself today! I am such a big girl!"