Strings

Three three year olds, a stool, and a string. From each end of the string two drag around the third on the stool all over the house. Not sure what to call this game . . .




(Sira leaps like no frog can.)

Speaking of strings . . . I never thought I would resort to banning strings from my children, especially strings that act as tails, and especially strings that act as tails that have balls tied to the end. It all has to do with Pinocchio. I love Pinocchio. Tsega loves Pinocchio like nobody. He even has a little wooden Pinocchio doll my mom picked up in, I think, Budapest (was a marionette, but we cut off all the strings) and Tsega loves his “nah-co-co” doll, formerly known as “kin-ee-kee-o”. (The doll makes an appearance in “Lettering” posted a couple of posts ago.)

(One dressed like Pinocchio doll.)



Yes, he is still full-on into the song and dance “Got no Strings”. But now another scene obsession emerged. Monstro Awakes. Pinocchio’s at the bottom of the sea searching for Geppeto as a whale swallows him. Pinoch has a rock tied to the end of his new donkey tail, the one he earned for being very bad at the wrong place and time, and so walks the ocean floor weighted down by the rock as he fights and swims frantically from the whale’s mouth. Tsega needs the tail with the rock and he flails his arms and runs in circles repeating about 2 lines over and over. He acts it out in the yard, in the house, with and without the video. Indeed, I have seen him spontaneously acting out several seemingly random scenes as he watches various cartoons like Bugs Bunny, Snow White (oh yeah, we have a collection of conventional toons, party at my house).

The thing is, it’s hard to sustain a ball or rock at the end of a string. It falls out. Or the weight isn’t just right. Or the position of the tail is a little off. You know three year olds, if a crumb falls off their bread they think it’s broken and suddenly they're screaming. This makes what’s supposed to be fun turn ugly. He gets too worked up. He whines. The tail makes him upset. And it’s not such a little thing that he keeps stealing shoelaces and losing them so that I keep buying more and way too many shoes in our house are unwearable. It’s pretty funny when you catch your three year old secretly unthreading your shoelaces behind closed doors and then tells you to go away when discovered. He’s a sweet kid, his brothers too, really sweet. They only tell me to go away because they want to get away with something I don't like. OK, so we are working on this. So now I am hiding shoelaces, shoes with shoelaces, and having heart-to-hearts with Tsega. The tail drives me nuts! I love the theatrics, I can't wait to expose him to more arts and classes, but the pickiness of the tail is too much.

I am like anti-Martha Stewart. I don’t even bother sewing buttons. So can anybody advise me on how I can make a tail that would carry a ball, or where I can get a small ball with a hook on it?? Like a ball and chain sort of dealy? Are we just weird or what? Pretty funny, huh? Us getting all worked up about tails. You gotta sit back and just laugh. :)