Growing up too fast

My oldest daughter has always had an amazing imagination.  She can entertain herself for hours playing with her stuffed animals and making up games.  At bedtime, especially, she will setup a pile of 10 or so of her stuffed animals on her bed and play camping with them, or school, or church, singing time, or any number of games. In fact, sometimes, she would kick her stuffed cat, Ariel, out of the room and ask us to put Ariel in the hallway because she was being too loud and not allowing her to go to sleep.

Enter the ability to read. I think it's great that my daughter is learning to read.  It's opening up a whole new world of entertaining herself and not having to wait for mom and dad to read books to her. My husband and I had a conversation the other night that we noticed that she was much quieter in bed before lights out and that we couldn't hear her playing with her animals. The next morning, the following conversation occurred:

Daughter to her 4 year old brother: "I never play with my stuffed animals anymore."
Mom: "Why not?"
"I like to read books in my bed instead."
"You can do both things."
"I can't remember the games I used to play with my animals."
"You can always make up new games to play with them."
"But they like to play the old games and I can't remember how to play them."

Noooooo!!!!

Ok, so I didn't really yell that out loud, but I wanted to.  I wanted to say "You can't grow up yet! You're only 6! Yes, reading is great, but you need to be a little girl and play with your stuffed animals forever." It made me sad. She really is growing up too fast, and I don't like it. I'm not ready for it. And Ariel and her other animals are getting lonely. I may have to start playing with her stuffed animals on her behalf.