I love all stages of babies, toddlers and preschoolers, but the age of 3 certainly has to rank up there in terms of the cutest age.

It’s the things they say and do that are so funny, poignant, and sometimes outrageous. They’re trying to make sense of the big world around them, and that’s a tall order.

None of my children ever developed imaginary friends before, but Emily has. She informed her brother, and then me, that her new friend is named “Alan Go”, and he is a mouse. This evening, she reiterated her claim that he is sitting in the blue reading chair in my bedroom. “He’s from a spaceship,” she stated authoritatively. “…from the doctor’s office.” (This was an important extra fact.)

She does not have a sibling or playmate close in age, and I’m told that children sometimes imagine a friend as a form of entertainment. So I will have to be careful not to sit on “Alan Go” or his spaceship. He certainly sounds like one of a kind!

Due to hearing loss, I wear hearing aids. Without them, I have to ask Emily to repeat things as her voice is so soft. One morning, I asked her to repeat herself, and she told me she would fix my “broken” ears. She went and got Will’s tennis racket from the porch and then gently touched my ear with it. “It’s all better now, Mama,” she said reassuringly. “Flowers were stuck in there!” (Using her new doctor kit, she diagnosed her Uncle Mike as having a Triceratops in his ear the other day. That is a very scary diagnosis, to put it mildly!)

Her interest in dinosaurs caused me to pick up a large toy T-rex at the thrift store the other day. I took it home and washed it up and gave it to her to play with, and she set about to “scare” her big brother with it, chasing him all over the house with her pint-sized roars. She asked to take it with her into the bath that night, so she did. A few minutes later, I set the dripping toy on the vanity and proceeded to get her dressed in her bedroom. I was just pulling her pajama top over her head when the most blood curdling roars and snarls began issuing from the bathroom. It startled even me for a second. The look of horror on her face was something to behold. She leaped into my arms, terrified. “It’s RAHRING, Mama!!” she cried. (She meant roaring.)

Turns out the T-Rex had batteries inside that I hadn’t noticed. By some fluke, the bath didn’t drown the batteries, and they kicked off the dreadful recordings. She thought the awful thing had come alive, and she hasn’t played with it since!

It was raining gently tonight for a long time, and at bedtime, Emmy asked to keep her window shade up so she could see the glistening trees in the light of the street lamps and rain coming down. We talked about how the rain gave a drink to the trees and grass and flowers. Then she said, “And all the pretty butterflies can also get a little drink.”

Somehow, the delicate picture that conjured up was too sweet for words.