Tuesday, March 11, 2008

The Old Times: Dress-Up and Play-Doh Barbershop

Last week, I headed to the Zimmerman household to watch 3 of the most adorable girls. Playing with them brought back some great memories of playing around the house with my brother when we were much younger, and I had so much fun.

The girls had received a new Play-Doh Doggy Doctor set. Tressa was very intensely treating the puppy's wounds, and the poor pooch seemed to have problems everywhere. I do declare, I've never seen a creature with more bandages than this!

Tressa was pretty much a band-aid factory there for over an hour. Just churning them out one by one.










In the meantime, Abi was busy with the Imagination Station, and she had opened up the bag of hats. She ran from the bedroom at least 25 times repeatedly yelling, "It's windy, Auntie Em! It's windy! It's windy, Auntie Em! It's windy!" There's no doubt she has been instructed by her mom and pop to wear a hat when it is cold outside, so in her make-believe world, she wanted to make sure I was protected. Tressa and Rian were given special protection too.

I have no idea how these bunny ears were going to block the wind for Rian, but she sure had a fun time wearing them and seemed ready for any stormy weather.

But no one was given more hats than I. Seems like Abi thinks my immune system is a little run down.

I miss the old days of taking an entire afternoon to pull out the Play-Doh Barbershop kit that Aaron and I used to love. There was the barbershop chair, the little people with tiny holes all over their head (scalp), and the tiny little plastic scissors used to give one a haircut. I miss the old days of spending hours dancing around with our white gloves and neon clothes in front of the black lights in our bedroom. My apologies to my brother. I know these types of memories can be a little embarrassing for a guy. But, they are wonderful memories to me. Of course, what isn't a wonderful memory is the amount of time it took and effort it took to take a little toothpick and pick out all of the little dots of Play-Doh out of the men and women's scalp after each time we played with the set. Maybe that's why it seems so special now. Because we played with it so infrequently because of all of the hard work it involved.

The smell of the Play-Doh brought back tons of memories, and playing with the girls is a wonderful break from the hustle and bustle of life. They sure make me smile.... even while trying to balance 7 hats on my head.

5 comments:

Kelly Spezzano said...

Cute blog! I love playing with my neices and nephew, like you it brings back memories of my own childhood. Just think years from now, you'll be remembering the memories of playing with Abi and Tressa!

As for the hat pic, I think you are definitely a hat person! :)

Anonymous said...

That sounds like fun. With my (youngest) nephews, I spend more time keeping them from beating each other up than playing games.

Elizabeth said...

Play-doh...the smell is definately unforgetable, but I don't actually remember playing with it that much. But Silly Putty I played with a lot. (The stuff that comes in the little eggs)

Dani said...

Is that how you spell Play-doh? Learn something new everyday.

I think you look very stylish with all of your hats going on.

strem said...

Dani, yes, that is how it is spelled. I had to check. I first spelled it Play-dough. Funny how we can see something so often and not know how it is spelled even though it is right there on the package. Guess that's because I'm usually wanting to rush ahead to the playing!

Elizabeth: My brother and I sure loved Silly Putty too. I always loved copying the comics on it or trying to get it to bounce or seeing how far across the room we could stretch it without breaking it. FUN times!