Julia's girls

For the past month or so, Julia has been telling me fictional stories about the imaginary girls she knows, usually prefaced with, "Mommy, I know a girl who..." Lately the number of girls in each story has grown, and she often begins by saying, "Mommy, I know three girls who..." or sometimes even "I know five girls..." When she's talking about three girls, they are usually Ella and Karolina and their big sister Katie. Julia has a LOT of stories about these three girls, two of whom are conveniently named after girls in her preschool class. Last week, when I dropped the (real) kids off at the baby-sitting play area of the YMCA, Julia apparently saw her three imaginary friends, because in the car she told me all about how they were at the Y with her. Sometimes she's so absorbed in trying to tell me about the three pretend girls she knows that she can't remember to keep her bum in her seat and focus on eating her dinner. This morning we had a conversation about her imaginary friends that went something like this:

JULIA: Mommy, I know, um...
ME: Three girls?
JULIA: Um, LOTS of girls, and, um, they went trick-or-treating, and there was a skeleton at the house, and, um, one of the girls got scared because she thought it was a real skeleton.
ME: Oh, boy!
JULIA: Yeah, and, infortunately, she got scared, but there was another girl with her, and she carried her up the steps.

I should point out that Julia herself was quite frightened of one of the houses we trick-or-treated at last night, mainly because of the CD of eerie sounds the owner was playing, and I had to carry her up the steps and ring the doorbell for her. Little did I know there were LOTS of girls going through the same ordeal.