Underwear is for wearing on your head
Three-year-olds are full of never-ending imagination. I guess kids learn the phrase "I'm bored" when they're older, because it's not even a concept for preschoolers, at least not mine. This is when having a twin must rock, because they have a constant playmate, not just for chunks of the afternoon, but for those slivers of time between breakfast and getting out of the house in the morning, between lunch and nap, after dinner and before bed. The games they make up just amaze me in their cleverness, reassignment of available items, and variety.
Earlier today they were walking around the house, up and down the stairs wearing blankets on their shoulders ("capes"), crocheted hats, and tights (over their pants) (?), carrying a baby doll in a plastic bin meant to hold stringing beads, while singing a song they had made up about celery.
They negotiate with each other over what to play ("now we're baby otters," "okay, now we're kitties," "now let's go to the store") and oddly there does not seem to be one who dominates the descisions more than the other. They have their bossy moments, but not here. Yesterday their cotton blankets were spread from the back of one bed, over one small rocking chair, and anchored with books. There was a menagerie of stuffed animals laying on top all in a neat row. As I began to remove them to return the blankets to their beds for bedtime, M hollered, "NOOOOOOOO, they're sleeping in their hammock." Right.
As I type they're walking around singing a song about being a "tailor" ("it means you're getting on a pony with a tail") and they're wearing several layers of dress-up clothes, with, I'm not kidding, (clean) underwear on their heads. Earlier this evening they were playing house. The games run into one another like a three-dimensional, two-person stream of consciousness. Much of what they do involves nurturing, and some reenacts cartoons they like, such as when they rescue a stranded animal a la Diego. When I was a child in the 70s my liberal Free To Be You and Me parents tried to break gender sterotypes by giving me trucks and my brother dolls. We traded. I'm not sure where my girls learned to wrap their stuffed animals in blankets and put them to sleep next to their pillows, but they've been doing it for half their life now. This stuff is in their genes, and one day I hope it'll help them be compassionate in the grown-up world.
They're also at an age now where they like to have "playdates." (I dislike that word, but it's a mommy staple in this day and age, so I'm forced to use it. When I was a girl I went to friends' houses to play. What was wrong with the simplier terminology?) I digress. We have two friends who are girls M+O's age, and we've had a couple of playdates with each child over the past month or so. Preschoolers enjoy running in packs, and these playdates are a blur three-year-old motion.
While my girls are in heaven, and I'm delighted to have them entertained, playdates are not the same as the weekly playgroups I miss so much from Minneapolis. Don't get me wrong, I really like to have mom friends here with whom I can hang out and get to know over coffee while our kids tear around the house in fairy wings and tutus. But I guess I'm still mourning what I left behind, two groups of moms whose kids were pretty much the same age, groups where the friendships between mothers did nothing but deepen during our time together. One group had 20-odd moms in it, and the other had a core of seven or eight women I looked forward to seeing each week. The bummer is that I don't think I'm going to find a playgroup here because kids the same age as mine are in preschool -- they just don't go to playgroups much at age three. And if there is an existing group here I can glom onto I haven't found it. I bet that even my group in Minneapolis will start to dissolve as the kids enter preschool next year...
Two steps forward, stop and look back over my shoulder. At least I'm moving forward. Kids change so fast and we've moved so often that phases of my childrens' lives are identified by where we lived -- in Brooklyn, it was the baby lump phase. Getting out of the apartment was an event. I'd meet moms in the park and we'd set our kids on a blanket with some toys, and they'd stay on the blanket. We moved to Minneapolis weeks before one started walking, and just as they were mastering a handful of words (I remember O said "mama mama mama" during our first days there). We frequented playgrounds, toddler pools, and playgroups. Now, in Boulder, we're on to playdates, tricycles, and preschool. I can't wait to see what they do next.
Earlier today they were walking around the house, up and down the stairs wearing blankets on their shoulders ("capes"), crocheted hats, and tights (over their pants) (?), carrying a baby doll in a plastic bin meant to hold stringing beads, while singing a song they had made up about celery.
They negotiate with each other over what to play ("now we're baby otters," "okay, now we're kitties," "now let's go to the store") and oddly there does not seem to be one who dominates the descisions more than the other. They have their bossy moments, but not here. Yesterday their cotton blankets were spread from the back of one bed, over one small rocking chair, and anchored with books. There was a menagerie of stuffed animals laying on top all in a neat row. As I began to remove them to return the blankets to their beds for bedtime, M hollered, "NOOOOOOOO, they're sleeping in their hammock." Right.
As I type they're walking around singing a song about being a "tailor" ("it means you're getting on a pony with a tail") and they're wearing several layers of dress-up clothes, with, I'm not kidding, (clean) underwear on their heads. Earlier this evening they were playing house. The games run into one another like a three-dimensional, two-person stream of consciousness. Much of what they do involves nurturing, and some reenacts cartoons they like, such as when they rescue a stranded animal a la Diego. When I was a child in the 70s my liberal Free To Be You and Me parents tried to break gender sterotypes by giving me trucks and my brother dolls. We traded. I'm not sure where my girls learned to wrap their stuffed animals in blankets and put them to sleep next to their pillows, but they've been doing it for half their life now. This stuff is in their genes, and one day I hope it'll help them be compassionate in the grown-up world.
They're also at an age now where they like to have "playdates." (I dislike that word, but it's a mommy staple in this day and age, so I'm forced to use it. When I was a girl I went to friends' houses to play. What was wrong with the simplier terminology?) I digress. We have two friends who are girls M+O's age, and we've had a couple of playdates with each child over the past month or so. Preschoolers enjoy running in packs, and these playdates are a blur three-year-old motion.
While my girls are in heaven, and I'm delighted to have them entertained, playdates are not the same as the weekly playgroups I miss so much from Minneapolis. Don't get me wrong, I really like to have mom friends here with whom I can hang out and get to know over coffee while our kids tear around the house in fairy wings and tutus. But I guess I'm still mourning what I left behind, two groups of moms whose kids were pretty much the same age, groups where the friendships between mothers did nothing but deepen during our time together. One group had 20-odd moms in it, and the other had a core of seven or eight women I looked forward to seeing each week. The bummer is that I don't think I'm going to find a playgroup here because kids the same age as mine are in preschool -- they just don't go to playgroups much at age three. And if there is an existing group here I can glom onto I haven't found it. I bet that even my group in Minneapolis will start to dissolve as the kids enter preschool next year...
Two steps forward, stop and look back over my shoulder. At least I'm moving forward. Kids change so fast and we've moved so often that phases of my childrens' lives are identified by where we lived -- in Brooklyn, it was the baby lump phase. Getting out of the apartment was an event. I'd meet moms in the park and we'd set our kids on a blanket with some toys, and they'd stay on the blanket. We moved to Minneapolis weeks before one started walking, and just as they were mastering a handful of words (I remember O said "mama mama mama" during our first days there). We frequented playgrounds, toddler pools, and playgroups. Now, in Boulder, we're on to playdates, tricycles, and preschool. I can't wait to see what they do next.
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