Watching Mia's role play

I love watching young children, particularly toddlers, as they role play. I'm particularly interested watching Mia play, as I naturally compare her to Harry, and the differences have really surprised me.

Mia has grown up surrounded by toy cars and trains. She has always played with them a lot, but lately I've noticed how motherly she has become in her role play. Harry has a great attachment to Giraffe, that he takes to bed each night, but Mia seems to attach herself so much more to dolls and soft toys. She has her Teddy, and her Seahorse musical toy that she takes about with her. Since we brought home Percy Bear from nursery last week she has attached herself to a new Percy Bear, offered as a replacement as she was so upset when he had to go back. She also has a little doll which she plays with more and more.

She packs them all up in her dolly pushchair and pushes them about, copying the places that we visit with her in the pushchair - nursery, school, the playground. She hangs a little handbag from the handles, where she keeps the bottle of milk which she stops to give to them at periodic intervals. She also loves giving them medicine from a spoon, and her absolute favourite activity is tucking them all up in bed. I find my cushions and little blankets scattered about all over the house, with teddies underneath them. One day I went to tidy the living room after dinner and found all her little dolls house dolls neatly tucked up on the floor, I couldn't bear to disturb them.

At the moment she is also completely obsessed with birthdays. Probably because Harry celebrated his birthday over three weekends - with presents and a cake each time - she is constantly presenting me with a 'birthday cake' (usually a toy plastic plate with a felt strawberry on it, or something equally random) and singing me Happy Birthday, before instructing me to blow out the candles.

I'm sure that Harry wasn't so motherly in his role play, and I don't think that it's anything to do with me, because I don't feel that I treat Mia any differently. Harry had plenty of soft toys that he could have mothered in the same way, and he much preferred pushing his cars and trains about. But I do love watching her play!