January's Visit

January came through the Cook household and left. That means a little more to Sarah than it might to you or me.

You see, Sarah enjoyed the buildup to Christmastime very much, so much that she didn't really understand it was over after Christmas came. It certainly didn't help that we followed tradition and left the tree up for almost two weeks. So, to help her move on, we very quickly started telling her that January was coming.

"Sarah, January is coming!" we would say. "January is coming. January is almost here!" We hyped it up for a few days during the week between Christmas and New Year's Day.

"January is coming," she one day said. "January IS coming! January gon' come an' tickle Sarah!"

"Ummmmm," we thought to ourselves. "Does she think January is a person?"

She did.

I thought for a minute about how to explain what a month is, or even the concept of time. Unsure of what to do, we decided to play along with it. The imagination is a good thing to develop, we thought. Thus, most of our dinner table conversation lately has had to do with the version of January who lives in Sarah's imagination. We wanted to know everything about this friend who was coming to visit. It turns out she has black hair, is very fun, and tickles with the worst of them.

Then, of course, January actually came.

"January is here, Sarah! Happy January!" "January is here? January is NOT here." "Yes, Sarah, January is here. January came!" Confusion built with each exchange. "January, where aaaaaaare you?" This went on for a while until Sarah finally accepted that January, whoever or whatever it was, had finally come, and either played along or actually started imagining the anthropomorphic month.

Emily and I wound up treating the month like a holiday, giving each other surprise gifts throughout the month that said, "happy January." Sarah really enjoyed it, once the initial confusion passed. She played with January most of the month, until we all bid the joyful month farewell. I would have felt just a little guilty about entertaining such silliness, but watching her little imagination blossom in other ways this January was reward enough. We're actually quite sad that January isn't coming back until next year.

Sarah, in the meantime, is having great fun with February.