the "umungous" jellyfish

i awoke this morning in the bean's bed (having been summoned by her in the middle of the night), and when i turned around to see what she was up to, i found her sitting up already, looking over the side of her safety rail.

without turning round to look at me, she said, "my toys are in the sea mummy. i have to rescue them and put them in the boat."

with that she got out and returned with the few soft toys that were on the floor, placing them on the bed in front of me. fearing that i would be overwhelmed with a bombardment of toys, i told her that her settee was a rock where the other toys could be safe too. she took up that idea and set the rest to safety. then she clambered back onto the bed.

"do you know the name of this boat?," she asked me, and then said, "it's a dinghy." when i posed the question back to her.

she picked up her mini bolster and said, "this is my oar. i can row with it. to get away from the umungous jellyfish. row row row," she puffed before adding, "oh no, it's stuck in the slimy kelp."

i asked her why the humungous jellyfish was chasing us. maybe it's trying to be friendly because it was lonely. but the bean said, "noooo. it wants to sting us." like i was some kind of benign moron.

when her daddy came into the room, she told her daddy to get into the dinghy as we were being chased by the jellyfish. delighted, i told dh that it's a "umungous jellyfish" but he wasn't surprised, telling me that yesterday, she told him, "it's invisible", which is why daddy couldn't see it (of course).

she's been obsessed with the dinghy and the octopus/jellyfish ever since i read her the story, the hidden forest, a well-illustrated australian book by jeanne baker. her previous book was where the forest meets the sea, which i had read to her when she was in the under 3s montessori programme. it's a book that i have been meaning to buy, but always forget.

anyway, in the hidden forest, the young protagonist, ben, is initially wary of the sea and what lurks beneath the waves and when he gets accidentally thrown overboard he imagines that something sinister is trying to grab hold of him. here, the page shows a translucent giant octopus reaching for the dinghy and ben.

the bean can't discern that this octopus is supposed to be what ben imagines and not a 'real' one, so she gets excited when we get to this page.

i recall that her first enactment from the story involved an octopus, but lately it's evolved into a jellyfish.