There’s a new baby in the house these days. Her name is Lilly, yes, spelled with a double-L, according to Teresa. Lilly is Teresa’s baby, or more accurately, her newest baby doll. She’s nearly a twin to Daisy, a baby doll she got last November, but Lilly is (quite obviously) a newborn and needs more attention than Daisy, now 4½ months old. When Teresa first started playing with baby dolls, she always insisted that she was the big sister and I was still the mom. When I pointed out that I really had no need to pretend to be a mom, she insisted. But for the past several months, she’s been willingly playing mommy to her baby dolls, putting them to bed in the doll cradle (and a bed made out of a cardboard box and blanket — parents have to get creative when things get crowded), nursing them, feeding them in the doll high chair, listening for them to cry on the toy baby monitor. They have a play mat to get tummy time, and they have distinct personalities. Daisy’s more easy-going; Lilly doesn’t like to sleep and often wants to be held. Play is a child’s work, educators say, and children learn best by using their imaginations to make sense of the world. But parents also can learn a lot about their children by watching them play and listening to what they say. All three of my kids played with dolls when they were small, although Teresa seems the most interested. Caroline used to read to her dolls; Frank liked to put them in the doll stroller and take them for walks. Listening to and watching Teresa, I hear and see a child modeling the behavior of a loving parent, one who tries to understand and anticipate her babies’ needs. Of course she’s 7, and her babies are dolls, and when she’s tired of playing mommy she can put them down and build with Legos or play Minecraft and kill zombies or go outside and toss a tennis ball for the dog. Parents are the first to teach their children about God, about faith, about relationships and about the world. We field the questions about why Jesus had to die, especially during Lent, and if it hurt, and why did it have to hurt? We tell the stories about Santa Claus, then acknowledge that they are pretend, to show how much fun it can be to give of ourselves and make the people we love happy. We are proud when our children not only cope with that news, but extrapolate to the Easter bunny and the tooth fairy on their own. God, we are told, is a loving parent, both father and mother, who has loved us all since the beginning of time. I look at Teresa mothering her baby dolls and I marvel at the thought.