"Batman," she said. "Don't get HELLO KITTY! She's MY FRIEND!"

"Oh," she said, her voice getting lower. "I would NEVER hurt you, Hello Kitty. You're the best!"

She continued on for a couple of minutes, arguing with her Batman figurine about who the Bad Guy was, using her "magic" wand to transform her various Squinky Squinkers into Bad Guys, then back again.

I sat there next to her on the couch, a bemused smile on my face as I listened to her dialog out what her "people" were doing.

And then I got a little jealous.

Who gets jealous of their three-year old?

I guess the answer is me. And it's not because she's got an adorable mop-top of curls or because she has eyelashes that just won't quit, but because she's so damn creative.

She has more creativity in her pinkie finger than I do in my entire body, including my semi-kicky hair.

When I was a kid, I played things like, "Let's make a pile of leaves," or "let's pretend I'm your boss and you're my employee." I never even bothered with lemonade stands because, frankly, the cost/benefit analysis was never in my favor. I'd never make the money I'd invest back, so why bother? 

Later that day, already taken aback by her awesome creativity, I sat on the driveway with a piece of chalk and drew a spiral. It's about the beginning and the end of things I can draw that don't appear to be drawn by a monkey using his toes.

"Wow, Mommy," she said, taking a quick break from the game of Frisbee we'd been playing. "That's pretty! What is it?"

"I don't know, Mimi," I replied, wanting to see what she saw in it. "What do you think it is?"

Confidently, as only a three-year old can be, she replied, "A spiral galaxy." Then she stared a minute at it and said, "You'd better label that. No one else will be able to tell."

Dutifully, I scrawled out, "SPRIAL GALAXY," hoping I'd spelled it right, drew a couple of arrows pointing to it, so there'd be no doubt to what I was referring to, and she stepped back, satisfied.

"Much better, Mommy. Now everyone can understand your drawing," she said, clearly happy that I was not, in fact, as stupid as I looked.

She and I returned to playing Frisbee, which basically meant she lobbed the plastic disc at my head while I ducked to make sure I didn't accidentally get my nose broken and have to be all, "no REALLY, my daughter threw a Frisbee at my head -- I am NOT being abused."

And suddenly, I wondered if I could develop a way to siphon off some of her creativity. While I thought about that, I forgot to keep my eyes on the Frisbee and she beaned me in the face with the disc, almost as if to say, "you leave me and my creativity alone, Mommy."

I totally deserved that and the bloody nose it gave me.