Blackberry Ice Cream in a Pink Egg Cone

Caroline loves ice cream. So when we visited her friend Maia (who has lots of fabulous toys) last month, I wasn't surprised when she went straight for Maia's Melissa and Doug ice cream set. This is absolutely the coolest toy: four (hard plastic) individual scoops of ice cream, two cones, and two scoops. Since all of the pieces are magnetized, you can actually use the scoops to pick up a scoop (or two or three or four) of ice cream and set it on a cone. It looks so real that if you close your eyes and think about being on the beach on a hot sunny day, you might actually lick it. Since Caroline and Maia's play date, I have seen the ice cream set at several toy stores. Each time, I pick up the box, look at the price (about $30.00), and think about how excited Caroline would be if she had her own set. But I haven't bought it. Until today, I couldn't quite place my finger on why. But I figured it out this morning when Caroline brought me a black rubber ball set inside one half of a plastic pink egg and said, "Here, Mama. I made this for you. It's a blackberry ice cream cone." In today's world of reality TV and toys that look like their real-life counterparts, children's imaginations seem fleeting. Maybe I'll buy the ice cream set for Caroline next year. But for now, I love her imagination.