Evie loves to play pretend. So much so, that the line between reality and pretend starts to blur a little bit.

At any given moment, Evie has assigned all of us characters to play. And I mean all of us, not just Sara, Evie, and me, but also Nala, stuffed animals, even inanimate objects (er, other inanimate objects besides the stuffed animals) in some cases.

It began with Alice in Wonderland. When she was going through her Alice phase, specifically after seeing the play, she assigned each of us a character. She was the White Rabbit, Sara was Alice, and I was (unfortunately) the Queen of Hearts. Not only did we have to answer to and address each other by these names, when called upon, we each had a catch phrase to say. Evie’s was, “I’m late! I’m late! For a very important date! No time to say hello, goodbye, I’m late, I’m late, I’m late!” Sara’s was, “Curiouser and curiouser,” and mine was, “Off to the dungeon!” (In the play, they were hesitant to say, “Off with her head!” so the queen was reduced to “off to the dungeon!”

As I commented on a similar post over at Stay at Home Blogger:

It leads to such ridiculous statements by Evie as, “Alice and the White Rabbit are watching the Queen of Hearts put salsa on his burrito.”

It kind of takes you out of the moment when you are trying to be stern with her and she says, “No, I’m not Evie, I’m Smevelyn!” (My fault on that one, it was a name I used for a little girl in a story I told her…not very creative)

The problem is, that our identities change by the minute. I could be Geppetto from Pinocchio, The Man with the Yellow Hat from Curious George, or Mufasa from the Lion King, all within a span of an hour. In fact, even Evie has trouble keeping track of who is supposed to be who. The other day I overheard her having a conversation with herself that went:

“Evie, do you have a bumblebee?
No, I’m not Evie, I’m George.
Oh, excuse me!”

Although it gets old at times, quite frankly, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I think an imagination extremely underrated as an important life skill. I think being able to think in that way will help you be successful, no matter what you end up doing in life. And I love that she will be able to entertain herself in this way. So in the meantime, I’ll put up with answering to Geppetto and telling her 50 times in a row that I’m glad she saved me from that whale.

I’m just telling you this, so that you can expect to have a new name assigned to you, should you ever come over to visit.