Hobbies

One of our favorite things to do lately is coloring. The girls climb up to the table or sometimes stretch out on their tummies on the floor and take their time choosing the perfect picture. They each have their own pile of crayons (and usually fight over them anyway) and set to work at coloring a picture (almost always, they are coloring a picture for daddy). Ladybug, in typically two year old fashion, grips the crayon with her fist and scribbles in long broad strokes. But Butterfly holds her crayon carefully, concentrates intently and colors amazingly well. She’s only three and a half but can stay in the lines to color neatly. Even her preschool teacher commented that she does exceptionally well at staying in the lines. Her pictures are always colorful and bright, having chosen a different color for each part of her picture. This means that a character on the page might have a green face, purple ears, yellow hands and a pink dress. Despite its unrealistic appearance, I love it. I love that she identifies each shape and assigns it a color and is expressing her creativity.

The girls also love, love, love play dough. Unfortunately, mommy does not. I hate the smell, especially since it lingers on your hands. Store bought playdough is sticky and homemade playdough is grainy. Both can make a mess (especially if it gets on the carpet!), leaves little grain sized pieces everywhere and inevitably gets mixed into another color. But I don’t want my neurotic nature to stop their fun since I know it’s a good activity so we have a stash that we reserve for them to play with when they have babysitters. Yesterday I got it out anyway (it still smells as bad as I remember) and they had a great time rolling out longs snakes as I supervised.

Books are the long time favorite. I think one of their favorite times of day is when daddy is putting them to bed. All three of them pile onto the bed, each girl having brought a stack of books for daddy to read. Butterfly’s recent favorite is her thick Pixar short stories collection or Sesame Street’s “Monster at the end of this book” (I think she just likes my monster voice). Ladybug loves her animal shaped books or the stories about angels. Yesterday I had the baby sleeping on my bed, propped up on a pillow. The girls came in with a pile of books and each lay down next to her to take turns “reading” her a story. Butterfly rambles in long (sometimes repetitive but always creative) paragraphs as she makes up a story to go along with the pictures. But even Ladybug is starting to tell the stories, mostly in her own jabber language with an occasional word that I can identify and associate with something in the picture she’s looking at.

An all time favorite toy lately is Butterfly’s make up kit that her Auntie bought her. All of it is pretend, with no paste or powder to make a mess but just colored foam cushions and color-tipped brushes to play with. Nearly every day the girls ask for their make up and take turns putting it on themselves, each other, me, sometimes daddy and even trying to put it on the baby. Along with that, sometimes they want their hairbrushes and bows too.

Other favorite toys lately are the “daddy tools” (Motor Works from Discovery Toys), wooden puzzles of a sphinx and of a cat (another Auntie brought them from the Met in New York), “clip clop” (a play horse they inherited from daddy’s childhood), the magnetic letters on the art easel (Ladybug got it from grandma for her birthday) and of course the classics like their pretend kitchen and their dollies (complete with stroller and crib).

Other new favorite activities include playing games like Candyland and Go Fish and raking the leaves (Butterfly calls it “ricking”). Usually Butterfly asks for these things and Ladybug just plays along, mimicking her big sister.