Elephants and princesses

Madeleine is REALLY into this pair of mother-baby elephant figurines lately; they are part of an entire set of wild animals, though at the moment the poor crocodile, tiger, lion, and hippo are entirely ignored as she singles out only the elephants as her playthings.  She usually stands at the windowsill to enact her pretend play games with the elephants, which can be confusing for me if I'm sitting on the couch beside the window and I can't tell if she's addressing me or the elephant mommy.

MADELEINE: Mommy?
ME: Yes, honey?
MADELEINE: (irritable at me for interrupting her game) No, it's HER mommy!
ME: Oh, the baby elephant is talking to her mommy? I'm sorry.  I thought you were talking to me.
MADELEINE: (in a forgiving spirit) How bout... you can be the DADDY?
ME: Oh, I'm the daddy?  Okay.  (in a low voice) Hi, baby elephant.  I'm your daddy.
MADELEINE: (pointing at me)  Yeah, you can be the daddy, and...  (pointing at Julia) you can be the Julia, and... I can be the MADELEINE!

I'm not quite sure why I'm the only one who didn't get to play myself in this whole game.  I understand that the role of elephant mommy had already been taken, but it's not as if an elephant Julia and Madeleine were part of the game.  Couldn't I have just been the regular human mommy?  Nothing against daddies, but I really have a lot more experience being a human mother than being an elephant father, and I think my acting skills would have gone to better use if I could draw on real-life experiences.

At any rate, true to her typical clingy attachment stage she goes through anytime she's really in love with a toy, Madeleine has been taking the elephant pair most anywhere she goes.  They are frequently her companions as she poops on the potty.  And the other day, when Ethan was working from home, Madeleine insisted on sitting beside him at the kitchen breakfast counter, playing her elephant game while Ethan clacked away at his computer.  At one point, I overheard the following conversation:

ETHAN: (sounding a bit shocked, and suppressing impending laughter) Uhhh... what are the elephants DOING, Madeleine?
MADELEINE: I fink... he's just LOOKING at her.

Ethan was kind enough to reposition the elephants as they had been when he and Madeleine had the above discussion:

Today I found them in quite the interesting pose, abandoned upon the windowsill:

That looks super comfortable.  Elephant yoga!

Madeleine did take a little break from playing elephants today to enact some Polly Pocket princess drama.  Taking her cue from Julia, she had Polly Pockets Sophie and bald Cinderella get into a fight over who would wear which color dress.  Don't worry, it was all worked out peacefully once Sophie, very reasonably, suggested the following to Cinderella: "No, let's justify this!  I think you can wear the BLUE dress."

 Sophie and Cinderella justifying this.