God knew how much I love a child's imagination.

Even before I was a mom, I'd laugh until I ached over other people's children and their incurable imaginations.

God knew that and providentially gave me a child with an imagination as big as the sky.
And I absolutely love it.

I knew my son had a world-class imagination

when he was still an only child and brought an airplane to me with a scowl on his face.  In his limited speech he told me, 

"Tyler grab! Tyler grab a airplane.  I say NO!"

Oh boy.

So we had sibling rivalry with an only child and his imaginary friend.

It happened three times in a row. 

The airplane got put on the counter "until you boys can play sweetly with each other."

It got better and better from there.  

Storybook pages come to life in  my living room.

Yesterday it was a yardstick with a shirt on it slung over his shoulder.

The shirt was hay, the yardstick his pitchfork, and he was Old John Skipton going to feed Bonny, the horse, with James Herriot.

My shopping cart has been a trash truck or a cable car for years.

So has our bed.

But there's more.  More so precious it hurts. 

So imaginative I hug myself and write cute things he's doing on my ever growing list of things that bring me joy. I kiss his cheeks -crumpets, his dad calls them- and tell him how special he is to me.

And I take pictures, trying to impress these golden days in my memory forever.

Lots of pictures.  He loves looking at them, too.

One day when he's grown past the stage of falling out of a wash basket boat with diving gear on, we'll look at the pictures together and laugh until our sides ache. 

My Son's Imagination...

One day he's a diver, complete with an oxygen mask and tank on his back, goggles, and an underwater camera (yes, he thrashes his way across the floor, photographing sharks and whales and things).

Diving is more fun with a friend.  

(By the way, he wanted to take his frog and get-up out into the grass. I nixed the idea because it was wet outside and I didn't want to have a wet, muddy frog in my house afterwards.  In retrospect, I probably saved our house when I told him no as I can imagine our very proper landlord coming over with an eviction notice had he seen this apparatus thrashing its way across the front lawn.) 

They stayed inside and went boating instead.

He makes a great astronaut standing on the moon with his space helmet and oxygen tanks.  "I'm climbing into my honeymoon," he said, "and am going to the planet."

His original spacesuit. This one was limiting in that he couldn't see where he was going and had to walk really slow. 

One day he got to use a real hose to help his dad wash off a real "firetruck".  A real hose that sprays real water sure beat my vacuum attachment which generally is pressed into service as a fire hose!   And, no, I still don't know how he manages to keep his oxygen mask sucked on so well.

A pilot like Daddy.  Only Daddy's briefcase is black and this little guy's is blue.  

Logic will take you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere. -Albert Einstein