Play-Doh = Imagination

My three-year-old daughter sculpted me a “flower pile” today.

Her technique included stealing the green play-doh from her younger sister, mushing it together with her orange play-doh and then slamming it all down on the dining room table for effect.  She then plucked a fake flower from a vase in the living room and planted it in the tye-dyed play-doh. 

She added the newspaper only because I hollered at her for setting her beautiful creation on the carpet seven times and leaving play-doh crumbs all over. 

And there you have it – a “flower pile”.

Soap please.

My three-year-old decided to ‘test the waters’ so to speak tonight and threw eleven washclothes into the bathtub while she waited for her turn in our nightly bathtime assembly line.  I had just dried off her younger sister and was throwing her into a pair of mis-matched pajamas (yeah, yeah, yeah….I’ll get to the laundry) when I noticed the opened, empty towel drawer. 

I cackled right along with her and then let her know that she could use half of the towels to clean her stinky butt and the other half to do some overdue tub scrubbing.  Funny, she didn’t think that was as cute as her towel toss idea.

She managed to lather up six of the eleven faceclothes and touch one elbow, a wrist, a kneecap, a boo-boo on her foot, her left shoulder, and managed to wash the “boogas out of hers nose”.  She used another two or three to cover pirates that had been leftover from her brother’s bath.   At one point she was telling me that the towels were manta rays covering each of the pirates and taking them away to the mommies of the manta rays so they could “be puts in time outs because they’s beings bads pirates”.  What can I say, the girl enjoys grammar in the plural sense?!?

I reminded her that she had to take care of some cleaning business at some point in the pirate zone.  She quickly started gathering the towels and placing them one by one on top of her knee cap.  Each one was placed on, followed by a “whoa………this is lots of towels”.  After she piled all eleven towels on her right kneecap she decided to give me a lesson in how to fold washclothes.  So much for the cleaning.

 

 “Folded” waschlothes.

I picked up the following from her little tutorial:  1) No need to wring out the washclothes - just leave them soaking wet.  2) If you bunch them up into a ball, you can achieve the same finished look.  3)  If you get tired after folding three or four, just leave the others to collect at the drain for your mother to pick up.

Eleven washclothes did manage to clean the kid eventually.  Of course, there’s still some tub scrubbing that needs to be done. 

If only I had a towel…………….

Designer Undies

From this day forward I will not provide underwear options to my three-year-old.  If the day comes where I have an extra thirty-five minutes to spare, then maybe I’ll reconsider.  Until then, my mantra is going to be you get what you get.  “Oh look, it seems as though the only clean pair of underwear in your drawer is the yellow, pink-striped, star-butted Nemo underwear – enjoy!”

Today, I made the mistake of asking my potty training three-year-old which underwear she would like to wear for the day, thinking this would generate excitement and also serve as a reminder throughout the day to not crap her pants.  Little did I know this motivational technique would result in deliberations, mind games, fashion shows, and regrets. 

I started by pulling underwear options out of the drawer.  This would be the exact moment in time I’d like to rewind to and delete.  My magic showcase from the underwear drawer should have simply been “Looks like we’re wearing Dora today!”.  Instead, I took the liberty of placing seven pairs of underwear on her bed for her to choose from - three being the same exact design, color, and size.

She patted each one down while laboring over her decision.  She pulled the Dora pair toward her, giggled, then quickly switched to Little Mermaid.  When I tried to rationalize removing two of the same Care Bear undies from the sea of options, she heatedly argued that they were in fact very different shades of purple. 

When pressed to choose, she would pick a pair, get so far as to place them at the base of her feet to step into, then pull a psych card out and say she changed her mind.  I tried to convince her that she had enough to wear a different one each day of the week.  But she decided that she’d be better equipped to make her decision after seeing them displayed on her stuffed animals. 

 

Harry the Hippo walking the fashion runway.

The stuffed hippo took the brunt of the humiliation by sporting Dora the Explorer, Little Mermaid, and Care Bears throughout the following fifteen minute fashion show.  None of them proved to be very flattering.

After giggling uncontrollably through the entire fashion show, potty girl eventually landed on a pair of fashion-forward Dora the Explorer undies and made her way downstairs.  Within five minutes of being downstairs I heard a loud “uh-oh”.  I quickly ran down the stairs to find her standing in the bathroom, pee dripping down her leg.

Rather than cry, she looked up at me excitedly and said “I want the Little Merwmaid ones now.  I didn’t weally wike those Dora ones anyway”.  

Well, I generated the excitement……so much for the reminder.