The Rain Forest Cafe

Last week Kaeley enjoyed some library books about the rain forest. She started many sentences with, "Mommy... did you know..." and most of the time I would answer back with a sincere, "No, I sure didn't!" Well, I did know why God gave us the rain forest... for the cocoa beans. :) This particular day Kaeley read the books for pleasure. This led way to drawing what she saw in the pictures. She drew pictures of monkeys (What kind? I don't know. I didn't read the books.), parrots, and flowers. The paper and markers led her to start writing. I feel like I'm writing a "If You Give a Pig a Pancake" story.

If you give a girl a book, she'll probably want to read some facts. If you give the girl some facts she'll probably want to draw pretty pictures out of what she's learned. She'll ask you for some markers and papers. If you give her markers and papers she'll probably want to imagine she's in school. Thinking of school will remind her of desks they use in public schools. She'll ask you if she can take over the kitchen. You'll count the cost of what she's asking you and decide it's worth the imagination and focus she'll invest. It's cheaper than a baby sitter, so you say, "Sure, but you're cleaning up all the mess." She'll start setting up an "office" with the kitchen furniture. Setting up the kitchen furniture to be a pretend class room will remind her of a restaurant. And if she decides to set up a restaurant she'll probably want a rain forest to go with it. Add a rain forest to a play restaurant and what do you have? The Rain Forest Cafe!

I don't know. It went something like that. Before I knew it the kitchen was taken over. There was a cashier, a chef, and a server. Simon tried with all his might to get into the "no zone". Of course, it didn't take him very long. Kaeley, our young lady with an old soul, decided the drive-thru was the way to go, so she squished herself into a toy bucket and scootered herself all over the kitchen floor. The bucket was her car.

If you're going to have plastic kitchen toys you have to have water and Cheerios, right? So that's what they got out. This play time lasted us about an hour? That's not bad, right? An hour of play time with no TV. An hour of active imaginations at work. An hour of siblings playing happily together. An hour somewhat to myself, so I cleaned the living room. An hour of play. Can you guess how many hours of clean up this took? I think by Sunday it was all cleaned up. Then there was dinner on Monday. Before I knew it there was bits of baked potato on the floor. Back to square one. Hmm... when I think about it my house is rarely clean, maybe I could just surrender and know our Square One these days is actually a mess after all. So really we went from mess to mess. Nothing lost and much gained, right? Did that train of thought make sense to you? We'll just go with it.

PS. Notice the yellow bowl of blue water? One day the Preschoolers and I did an experiment with water. Sure enough, water put in the freezer actually does turn to ice. This simple experiment through Kaeley for a loop. She was so excited to see what would happen if she put blue food coloring into the water before freezing it. Well! If you give a girl a bowl of frozen blue water she'll probably... long story short it was first a bowl of blue ice. Then it turned to a ice rink for a Polly Pocket doll (to play with outside) and from there a swimming pool surrounded by plastic palm trees. Within an hour Kaeley came back into the house with bluish-purple hands. That was fun. :)