Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Playing with the dough

Over the weekend the spirit of Alpha Mom once again took up residence in my body. When the boys started fighting over a tiny piece of playdough, I sprang into action. "Let's make playdough!" I suggested, making a mental inventory of what I needed. It's easy, and holy mother of god is it ever cheaper than buying the stuff in the tiny plastic tubs with the scent that makes me a little queasy.
"Really?" they asked.
"Yes, let's go downstairs and get started."
I got to pans and measured ingredients, mixed in the water and let the boys select their color from my selection of food color pastes I use for cake decoration. Within minutes we had bright aqua blue and a deep purple globs of dough. Did I stop there? Hell no! I mixed up two more batches. A few minutes later, we had deep green and a sunny yellow glob too. The boys were impressed.

When we headed upstairs to play, I set them down at the play table and expected to sit back and relax a bit while they sculpted and molded and were generally appeased. I popped open the laptop and settled into my comfy chair for some mommy time. And that worked for about 2 minutes.

As I sat basking in my smug satisfaction that I am really good at this mommy thing, Little Dog came over and asked me to sculpt Four Arms, a character from Ben 10. I'm not entirely certain which one he is and have no idea what he looks like. I asked a few questions and made an attempt to please my child. It worked. But maybe a little too well. For the next hour I was put to work sculpting every alien on Ben 10 and the people as well. This was not the quiet creative play I had anticipated, but boy were they ever entertained. Me, not so much. Taking art direction from a bossy 3 year old is not nearly as fun as it sounds. Trust me, I know.

3 comments:

geekymummy said...

Go Alpha mom! My mum was a play dough maker too, and much admired by all of our friends, and now her grandchildren for her skills! I still like playing with it.

Beth said...

I love homemade play dough! That stuff tastes awesome!

Mrs. F said...

I used to make play dough for the kids' preschool classes. I mean, they have to be allowed to play with it somewhere, right?

(I made the mistake of letting them play with some blue playdough on the carpet. It has been banned from my house since that fateful day, 3 years ago!)

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