Playing Doctor

My husband and I spent last weekend remodeling our bedroom (and we STILL have some finishing touches to add...will it never end?!?!?). As a consequence, the rest of the house was neglected all weekend and looked like a disaster. So, I decided that this week the little girl that I'm watching and I would spend a day at my house so that I could catch up.

I don't have a lot at my house for the little kids, so I had her bring several of her favorite toys, which included 3 baby dolls and a doctor's kit. And, of course, there's always the allure of Sam the dog.

As I folded laundry, girl quickly went through all of her toys and decided that she and Sam were going to play hospital. Okay. Have at it. Of course, Sam just kind of laid there and let her pick on him, as she applied fake bandages and took his temperature. He rolled over a couple of times for a belly rub, but was left disappointed.

Then she asked me, "where are his knees?" holding that little reflex hammer in her hand.

"Well," I replied, "He's got four of them."

"Four knees?" she asked, surprised. "We only have two knees."

"That's right," I again replied, "but he's got four legs, so that means he has four knees. See them there on his legs?"

She examined him closely. "Oh...okay."

"But when we tap his knees we have to do it very gently, don't we? Because we don't want Sam to get mad and not play with us," I warned.

"Okay," she answered.

Then, she carefully approached Sam and looked him over. As instructed she very softly tapped his right hind leg. Then she walked to his other side and softly tapped his left hind leg.

She then, very gingerly, tapped his penis.

Sam...God bless him

I've just started watching a little girl during the daytime hours for the summer. She's one of my preschool students, so her mom knows that I've got lots going on in the area of music. So today, since her mom had the day off and had planned to watch a friend's children, she wondered if she could come to my house for a couple of hours so the children could have some music time.

Sure! We've got enough instruments and cool music stuff to keep them occupied for a little while. I was a little worried, though, because at this point most of my kid friendly music stuff is at school. And I had just put everything away for the summer, so I wasn't about to drag it all home. What would we do for two hours that would keep a 3 year old girl, 5 year old boy, and 9 year old girl entertained?

As it turned out, I didn't have to worry about any of it, because from the minute they walked in the door they were concerned with one and only one thing:

Mr. Sam.

We tried to get them interested in Josh's trombone, and I had filled a bunch of wine bottles with water (so that you blow across them and get different pitches), but all of that lasted about a total of 30 seconds. Finally, the mom and I gave up and just talked for a while and let them play in the other room with Sam. When we came to check on them, this is what we found:


They had made Sam a fort. Wasn't that just so nice of them?

There he is, defeated and humiliated, buried under our entire collection of couch and chair pillows. What a great sport!

He's now sleeping.