A mouse?

Madelyn sits at the dining table to eat facing the window that looks out over a tree in our backyard. We have a walkout basement so the picture below is basically the view that she sees. So, yesterday we were sitting down eating dinner when she said very matter-of-factly looking toward the window, "I see a mouse." Seeing that it is too cold outside to have mice running around, my first thought was that a mouse was INSIDE MY HOUSE! So my first question was, "Is it inside?" "No," she says, "It is outside in the tree." I am stumped so I look outside for a minute and then I see it. Can you see what she is talking about in the picture below?


It is really a branch that is going off in the opposite direction but I have to say it does look like a mouse! Madelyn is pretty convinced that it is mouse too. :) I told her today when she was talking about it again, "You know it isn't a real mouse, right?" She replies after a minute, "Mama, it IS a real mouse. It isn't pretend." I left it at that for now. She added tonight that it has "a really long tail."


It is kinda fun to watch her lately recognize shapes and other objects in interesting places. Today she also told me that she had made a flower on her apple. What she meant was that she had eaten her whole apple in such a way that it looked a flower. It probably is an expected development milestone, but I'm impressed with her creative mind nonetheless.