Tuesday,
September 29, 1987
First
thing in the morning, today: Play Dough.
All
three girls are making Play Dough dinosaurs, trees, and volcanoes.
Camille is also making dinosaur bones, and then she branches out to
make some items that seem to have no relation to dinosaurs or their
world. Mindy makes yet another dinosaur and then a tree. After
getting them just how she wants them, she surprises me by flattening
them down. “These are cookies,” Mindy says.
So
I guess she's kind of branching out, too.
After
what seems like a long time (but isn't) the girls help me put away
the Play Dough, get dressed, and stand still long enough for me to
brush their hair. They eat their breakfast. And then they begin to
play again. This time, with stuffed animals and dolls.
The
first time I walk by the girls, they have out a bear family. Soon I
hear Mindy say, “I got a new Lady Lovelylocks nightie. See,
Camille?” Mindy starts to take out the Lady Lovelylocks dolls, but
Camille grabs one of the baby dolls instead. Right away Lindsey and
Mindy fall in with baby-doll play, and each is soon washing,
dressing, and feeding a baby doll. We have quite a few dolls, so
they each can make a choice between several dolls, but I hear them squabbling a bit about who
gets which doll, anyway. I am on alert, ready to go over to them if
they need me, but they come to a solution on their own.
I
go out to the garage to put in a load of laundry, and when I come
back I am surprised to hear the girls talking about space. I remember
that Mindy has been angling to “study” space after we're “done”
with dinosaurs, and I sit down to watch with some amusement to see if
they have really integrated space exploration, or something like,
into their baby-doll play.
Mindy
has the book Cosmos out again, in her lap, and she is talking
about Saturn. I soon realize that they are pretending to be traveling
to Saturn, but I don't think they are daring astronauts. I watch a
while longer. Sure enough, it turns out that they are just ordinary
moms with their babies, just traveling to Saturn as per usual. Ho
hum.
Suddenly
they troop off to the kitchen/family room. I get up and start to move
to the bathroom that most needs cleaning, but they are soon back, so
I turn to see what is afoot now. The kids have the bag of play money,
and Mindy says, “Who wants to make a restaurant in space?”
Lindsey and Camille both say, “I do! I do!” (It sounds trite and unnatural--but those
are their actual words.)
We
are interrupted by the doorbell. It's Delia and Kiki, ready to whisk
Lindsey off to Mommy and Me. Lindsey had been excited to go, earlier
today, but now she says that she doesn't want to go, after all.
She
makes an excuse: “I don't like that game, Delia,” she says. “I'll get tired...”
I
study Lindsey carefully. She seems a bit congested, and she is
even a little clingy, which is unusual for her. I decide not to send
her. Delia tells me that she would like to borrow an old toy organ
for some project her older son, Eric, is doing, so we go off to find
that. Then Delia and Kiki leave, and (the restaurant in
space apparently forgotten) Mindy asks if we can get
out the Halloween decorations. “Please?”
So
we do.
Once
the boxes are brought in from the garage, and the basics are put out
on display (I'll do some more decorating later), Camille and Mindy
remind me that it is time for “school.” Mindy finds the bell, and
this time Camille rings it.
Since
nobody has announced a letter for the day or any other content, I ask
the three girls if they want to read the dinosaur books we'd checked
out of the library. There is eager assent, and we read about
pterosaurs, we look at a great pop-up dinosaur book, and we read
about dinos in Spanish. At the end of the last book, Los
Dinosaurios Gigantes, there is a map of where the dinosaurs
lived. The older girls pore over this, and we discuss all the
continents where dinosaurs once roamed: North America, South America,
Europe and Asia (identified on the map as Eurasia), Africa, and
Australia. In other words, pretty much everywhere! The girls
ask if dinosaurs lived right where we live now, and so we identify
our continent, country, state, and general area on the map and decide
that they had lived here, once.
Planning
for the Dinosaur Day party, the kids decide to make “exhibits”
(their word) out of Legos. Camille takes a break to undress and
re-dress her doll, then does some more Lego-building, then undresses
and re-dresses the doll again.
For
snack today, we cut apple slices into rough pterosaur shapes and also
have toast, cream cheese, and hard boiled eggs. We clean up our
snack, and Mindy asks to get out the Play Dough again. Camille asks
to watch the Mr. Rogers dinosaur show. Lindsey asks if we can do both!
So
we set up a little table near the TV, turn on Mr. Rogers, and the kids start sorta-kinda watching
while sculpting. Camille rolls the dough into what she says are dinosaur eggs, Mindy cuts and
pats the dough without labeling her products, and Lindsey makes what
she identifies as cookies. Soon Mindy decides that Camille's eggs are
cool, so she reforms her Play Dough into dinosaur eggs, too. Once
Camille has amassed a whole lot of eggs, she tells me that some are
chicken eggs, and some are dinosaur eggs. She counts (accurately) and
informs me that there are 27 eggs. Mindy reminds me that ALL her eggs
are dinosaur eggs.
Mr.
Rogers is talking about being scared, which is something that Camille
experiences a lot when she watches videos. Mr. Rogers puts a coat
over his head and pretends to be a monster. Camille shakes a few
times (this shaking-with-fright thing is something I've seen before)
but doesn't show any other signs of being scared. There is a mystery
having to do on the show, and when it is about to be
solved, Camille tells us, “I'm getting scared.” Then she gets up,
runs over to me, and clings to my leg. “I'm getting scared,” she
says again. Of course, I comfort her, but also (of course) the mystery is resolved in a comforting way.
The
video over and the TV off, the kids put away the Play Dough, and I
put away the table and chairs. The girls notice that there is a new
song on the piano, and they ask me to play it. Then Mindy and Camille
each try to play the song, using the number-scale on the piano
keyboard to help them remember which keys to play. (By the way, for the rest of
the day, I notice them singing snatches of the song.)
After
my short performance on the piano, I go back to the long-ago
interrupted bathroom cleaning and am happy to have the girls' piano
playing as an accompaniment to my task. However, after a short while I
notice that the piano has fallen silent and the girls are pretty
darned quiet, too. Then there's a scream!
I
emerge from the bathroom to see that Mindy and Lindsey have gone into
their father's closet and put some of his shirts over their heads and
are now making growly-snarly sounds. “Are you monsters?” I ask,
nervous about possible damage to the shirts--but especially worried
that Camille will get frightened again.
“Yes!”
roars Lindsey through her shirt. I then see Camille emerging around
the corner, also with a shirt over her head, and also making fierce
noises.
“Just
a moment,” I say. I quickly explain that these are Daddy's nice
shirts, and I put the three shirts away. “Mr. Rogers used a coat
like this one,” I say as I get a trench-type rain coat out of the
hall closet. Camille eagerly adopts that coat and puts it over her
head. As she roars and growls and snarls, I find two more similar
coats for Mindy and Lindsey. Just a few minutes later, as I'm back on bathroom-clean-up duty, I realize that nobody is making monster
noises, anymore. I poke my head into a bedroom to see why and realize
that the three girls are wearing the coats the regular way, cinched around their waists with the belt ties.
“Where'd
the monsters go?” I ask, surprised that the play has turned so
quickly to another scenario.
“We're
detectives!” the girls inform me. They are looking for purses in
the closet. I go back to my bathroom tasks. I notice, as they troop
through the hallway, that they have the play money out again and are
stuffing it into pockets and purses. They are talking about money
going missing.
Soon
the kids check in with me. I am almost done with the bathroom, and
they ask if I have any mystery that needs solving. “Um...” I
remember their talk about lost money, and I quickly say, “Yes, my
dog is missing. Could you find my lost dog?”
Not
a brilliant and exciting (or even realistic) problem for detectives
to solve, but the girls seem happy enough as they dash off to solve
The Problem of the Lost Dog.
Next
thing I know, as I go into the kitchen/family room, Lindsey is
sitting at the little table, using letter stamps and a stamp pad. She
doesn't seem to be a detective anymore.
Camille
announces she is going to make a “detective sign.” She sits down
at the table, too, and reaches for some letter stamps and a piece of
paper. Mindy sits on a third chair and says, “Me, too.” Mindy's
sign is hand-lettered. Next to a picture of a man, she writes:
C
M L L C [star shape] T T A
I
K O K E B U
F
B W [star shape] V X Y
S
A M
Camille
has stamped letters on her sign and now writes the same letters
underneath.
C
G Z T Y X X V
T
T J A A K N F
B
U F W X X Y Y
C
A M I L L E M M Q Q F
A
A K U V
M
Z Y X Y X U A
O
P W L Z T Q
Lindsey
is no longer using the letter stamps. Instead she is drawing, and she explains her pictures. “This is Mommy very happy,” she says. “Mommy
getting married.” And, “This is the whole family.”
I
start to prepare some food for lunch: cutting up cantaloupe into
cubes, cutting cucumbers into circles, and so forth. I get out the
still-frozen peas, which are fun to eat like the sweet, frozen treats
that they are.
After
lunch, the restaurant idea from this morning finally resurrects
itself, but it is no longer a “space restaurant.” Each girl takes
turns taking orders from the other girls, writing down the orders on
a notepad (not really, of course, but scribbling as if they are
writing). They always ask a question or two such as, “And what
would you like to drink?”
The
restaurant game eventually segues into a re-enactment of the “make
believe” section of the Mr. Rogers dinosaur show. Mindy is Lady
Abilene, and Camille decides that she is also Lady Abilene.
The girls get out some tapioca pudding to “feed” to some
dinosaurs.
In
the meantime, Lindsey is not interested in feeding dinosaurs tapioca
pudding—and she doesn't even want to be a third Lady Abilene.
Instead, she has plopped herself onto the floor with the magnetic
letters and board, and she is using the magnetic letters to make
“words.” She keeps asking me to read the words, and I do my best,
usually inserting vowels to make the “words” pronounceable. “GNF”
becomes “GANEF,” for example.
After
a long time of this word-creation play, I suggest that Lindsey put
all the letters into the holding tray in alphabetical order. (There
is a letter-shaped hole for each letter, so it's a bit like doing a
wooden shape-puzzle.) Lindsey likes the idea and works hard to do the
task. Actually, it is more challenging than I thought it would be.
When
Lindsey is done with the magnetic letters and joins the big girls in
their game, the scenario changes again. I listen long enough to
realize that all three girls have special powers when they press
their fingers together in certain ways. I know they must've gotten
the idea from that brand new TV show, Out of This World—they
saw the last few minutes as we waited for The Bill Cosby
Show to start. In Out
of This World, the main
character is a teenage girl who can freeze time by pressing her two
index fingers together.
After
a good, long play session, the girls seem a bit tired and crabby. I
give them some water and juice, and then they spot the materials I'd
put out on the table: paper, crayons, a bowl of water, watercolor
paints, and paint brushes.
They
immediately want to use the art materials. I show them a quick demo
of “crayon resist” art, telling them that we can do crayon
drawings first and then add watercolor paint—and that the paint
will not cover the crayon drawing. The girls want to try the idea.
Mindy
slowly and carefully begins to draw a dinosaur for our Dinosaur Day
party with a crayon. Lindsey and Camille quickly cover their papers
with large, swoopy crayon lines. Once most of their papers are
covered with “scribbles,” Camille and Lindsey seem bummed.
Camille asks me for another piece of paper and a stencil. Lindsey
asks me for help to make a “good” dinosaur drawing.
I
find the dinosaur stencils and let Camille choose one. Lindsey and
Mindy both decide that they want to use stencils, too.
The
girls enjoy the satisfying moments of swooshing bright blue paint over
their drawings and watching the crayon lines and figures pop out,
waxy and colorful, from the watery background.
From
one art project to the next: the girls decide to color in Color Me
dinosaur pictures. Camille wants to color in a mermaid but gets
frustrated and announces, “I'm going to go with the dinosaur
picture.” The art session ends when Maria arrives to pick up
Camille. Maria looks over all the stuff the kids are getting ready
for Dinosaur Day, we discuss the details of the museum trip we are
taking together tomorrow, and then they leave.
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