One of the most fascinating things about LuLu are the themes in her play. While painfully redundant at times, they are very different from most children's play, yet are full of learning experiences.

LuLu is obsessed with all things medical. So that is what she plays. While other children play school or house, her toys are always being hospitalized. Her stuffed animals, and to a lesser extent, baby dolls are always sick, always battling cancer, always needing emergency intervention. And she is always the doctor, nurse or therapist.

Today, because she was going to have a sitter while I went to a neuropsych interview, there was little focus on academics and no HBOT therapy appointment. So she's had the whole day to recover from her strep throat. She spent the day playing.

She started off doing surgery on her stuffed bear (actually cutting a small hole and placing a "feeding tube" and stitching it back up.) My objections to cutting up her animal fell on deaf ears. But I have to admit that her stitches made me wonder if she really does have surgeon in her future.

Just now she emerged from the basement with biking gloves on and a "tattoo" on her forearm drawn with face paint. She's an "animal cop" (her favorite show on Animal Planet) and had a sick dog in her arms that she was taking into the vet because it had several tumors that were probably cancerous. Guess she thinks animal cops have tattoos of snakes on their arms and need to wear gloves?!?!?! Then she came running back in to inform me that the tests were "negative" and he was going to live.

That made me smile. See, on Tuesday when we had the strep test done, we had a lengthy discussion about why we wanted tests to be negative and not positive when we want her behavior to be positive and not negative. It was a chuckle to see she had worked it into her play scenario.

I also had to smile because the dog was going to live. So many times her play has re-enacted a trauma or had an unhappy ending. We've had lots of tragedies in her imaginary hospital and lots of abused animals the "animal cop" has recovered.

It makes me wonder if we've turned a corner psychologically if her toys are starting to survive the surgeries, heal from the illnesses and their tests are coming back negative...perhaps there's more healing going on around here than I realized...