Washing

So in the last post, I showed you Purple Boy.  He was so purple he turned the bath water a lovely shade of lavender. 

The next morning, my dreams were permeated by the sound of water running in the bath tub.  Instantaneously awake, I leapt out of bed and flew down the hallway.  Mowgli was standing over the tub giggling maniacally.  In the tub were about 8 stuffed animals, including his favorites Mickey Mouse & Simba.  All of them had been colored with purple markers and were now taking their bath. 

We rescued the animals from the bathtub, and I made Mowgli cart them downstairs to the laundry room for a proper 'bath'.  I made him empty the dryer, and put the clothes in the washer into the dryer.  I measured out the soap for him to put in the washer and had him load it up with the animals.  And in an amazing feat of mommyhood, I still got him dressed and ready so that he didn't miss the school bus.
When he got home from school all the animals were clean and dry, sitting on the couch, as good as new.  All was well in his world.  

Today I took some towels down to the laundry room to be washed.  I opened up the washer to find mound and mounds of soap all over the clean wet clothes.  There was another pile of soap on the floor in front of the dryer.  Opened it up, and sure enough there were more mounds of soap inside the dryer. 

Like a great big glowing sign saying 'I tried to give Mickey another bath.'

This is what I get for teaching him how to use the washing machine. 

A purple request

Purple Boy would like to make a request


He got all dressed up to make it


He's just too small for a trombone.   And the slide is really damn delicate for a 7 year old.  We need to find Mowgli a trumpet, or maybe a bugle. 


We think he was shooting for this
 

Triumphant Return

Apologies for my lengthy absence, there were issues and doctors and plungers and robots, but hopefully things are better now.  But really who cares, when I have new cool stuff to share. 

Like this.  I was shopping in a little asian grocery store when I saw possibly the most awesome/horrific product ever:

And this: 

That is Mowgli's favorite toy stuck to his tummy there.  We were at the hardware store when Mowgli asked for a pair of plungers.  Plungers are cheap so I said yes, and agreed that he could have two.  But as we were walking around finishing up I found myself saying things like, "Keep your plungers to yourself."  and "If you can't behave we'll put the plungers back."

Halloween is scary.

As we were walking home from trick-or-treating, a nine year old walking near us said "I wanna be really scared.  Like, I wanna have nightmares tonight."

Thing is, halloween doesn't need any help to be scary. 

You put on strange itchy clothes.
Then you knock on doors of houses that you usually never go up to.
Angry sounding dogs bark at you.
And in our neighborhood, adult men wearing masks hide in the bushes and jump out at you.
Then the smoke machine and strobe lights turn on so that this thick smoke curls between you and your parents trapping you with these strange people who jump out of bushes. 

One guy who really scared Mowgli felt so bad.  He started trying to apologize, but the first thing out of his mouth was, "Look, it's ok.  I have snacks.  They're good snacks.  Fat free."

Two more play-script books

Ok the first two books I made were for playing Pirates & Dragons.  Nice thing about those, I didn't have to draw any people.  People are harder than just about anything else to draw.  This time I manned up and drew some people, in two very different styles.

Let's Play Doctor:

Let's Play Fireman:

The way we use these for therapy is to have Mowgli play with the toy for a little while.  Then he reads the book with his therapist, then they act out the play-script with the toys again. 

Again, anyone who wants to use these images for their own therapeutic purposes, is welcome to do so. 

Teaching Play

One of the things we've been working really hard on around here is pretend play.  This is a really hard thing to teach because most children don't have to be taught, they just do it naturally.  One way to try to teach it is to give the child some templates of play, or play scripts.  Since Mowgli can already read, I decided to use books to provide the templates.

I went to the bookstore to try and find a few appropriate books, but the selection, um.... left something to be desired.  All of the books at his reading level had plots that were way way way to complicated.  All of the books for younger kids had no plot at all.  So I decided to make my own.

They were really fun to make.  They've both got a total of 4 pages including the cover.  They're bound with embroidery thread.  The illustrations were done with india ink & watercolor.  I constructed 2 more books that I haven't written anything in yet.  I'll post them as soon as I've finished the illustrations. 

Let's Play Dragon

 

Let's Play Pirates. 

Mowgli loved them & they've been great so far.

Images are free to copy for use in therapy.