Don't let Layla pick the game at recess

We've progressed from playing spiderman vs. dinosaur to Layla's new creation of cottonwood tree vs. green tree.

That's right.  Her idea of fun is to have one of us stand like a cottonwood tree and the other like a "green" tree.  No battles, not even any wind allowed, just stand like trees.  The ultimate tree hugger, or child with no imagination?  To make matters worse, she over enunciates cottonwood and pronounces it cot-ON-wood.

It's clear where her idea came from.  Last week when the miserable, worthless cottonwood tree in our yard started blowing out, we discovered that she is absolutely terrified of the floating fuzzies.  I guess it goes along with her weird fear of hair, but she was literally screaming in terror at one point when one found it's way into the car.  Mike thought it would be a good idea to try and get her to touch it.  She wouldn't.  I put it on the seat beside me for the drive, and every stop light she would tell me that she thinks that the cot-ON-wood fuzz wants to get out of the car now and find it's family.  Or a number of variations that included "he just wants to be free".  You're not slick.  She seems to have gotten over the worst of her fears and will at least play outside now, even though it's still falling at a fairly consistent pace.

I don't understand how a kid can love petting huge snakes, but fear itty bitty soft cottonwood fuzz.  Wait till the pods fall and start tearing her feet up.  That would at least make her dislike of it make sense.

In the mean time, we play cottonwood tree.  Fun times.