Giddyup!

About a week ago, The Princess came trotting out into the living room with a large stuffed Eeyore, giggling uncontrollably.  I don't know which was cuter: the movement or the cackles.

Since then, she's galloped out of her room on at least three other stuffed animals.  Get this: each and every one of them is a horse or donkey of some kind.  She straddles their backs and gallops or trots around the house while holding onto their ears.

The Princess, as you know by now, has hippotherapy once a week.  She rides various horses while laying on her tummy across the animal's back.  She had one pony ride last fall where she sat up in a saddle, but that's it.  Yet, she somehow instinctively knows that horsies are ridden by a person who is upright, straddling them, with something to hang onto right around the mane.

If that wasn't enough to gawk at, consider the fact that she is obviously pretending.  By herself.  With no prompt from anyone.  My little girl is using her imagination and playing in a productive way with her toys.  These are toys which we have never used in this way...the entire thing is coming from her imagination.

This doesn't happen very often, but I'm speechless.  Speechless, that is, if you don't count the laughter.  I wish you could all be here to see this when it happens.  Her giggles are contagious, and it's made all the better by the fact that she's pretending.