Astronaut Abbie... or is it "Darthie Vader"?

Abbie has a new game: breathing inside the bucket. She has a couple of toy buckets, one green and one clear plastic. She especially likes the clear one for the purposes of playing the Astronaut Game: breathing and blowing inside the bucket. She loves to "talk" into it, to breath into it and to listen to the "echo effect" - she thinks it's the funniest of things!

It reminds me of astronauts, with their big, glassy helmets. She has tried, too, to stick her entire head inside the bucket for a fuller effect, but quickly realized that the bucket would simply sit on top of her head. So, instead of a stereo surround sound effect, she is rather content with the monaural audio she is able to reproduce. Bless her heart! She'll emit cute, chirpy sounds, and then breath in and out, slowly, in and out, while her face is buried in her makeshift helmet - all the while looking around through the bucket.

There are a few variations to the Astronaut Game: blowing air into an empty shampoo bottle, or into a drinking glass. The common thread here is the breathing: controlled, slow, in and out, in and out, in and out... She sounds just like - what's his bucket... that weird fellow in Star Wars, with the big black helmet and the breathing impairment. Ah, Darth Vader.

I have to admit that her Darthie Vader persona is right on the money. Must be in her father's genetic code.

[I was only able to capture a few seconds of her new game on video. By the time I got the camera, it had already gotten old for the hour :)]