Sowsee and Dragon, both hamsters, spent time in my living room today.
This is their cage. The doorway is in the middle.
On Wednesday I checked out a book that Henry saw on the library shelf,
Toys through the Ages, published in 1963 and printed in Czechoslovakia (amusing to me since I've been thinking of the
Czech movie Alice). The book's introduction talks about possible reasons children play with toys: to learn adult skills in the same way that playing with yarn gives kittens practice in mousing; to release pent-up energy; to awaken distant human memories. Hmm...I don't get it, but it sounds intriguing.
This old leather coin purse came from Grandma Pearl's leather pocketbook. It smells awful, but Henry likes to play with it. The scratched-up end table is from my parents' home and the matryoshka dolls are a baby gift (thank you Debbie!) that Henry is now loving. I treasure this kind of play--the kind that integrates old smelly objects with shiny pretty ones and employs cheap plaster-of-paris Shrek banks (above), rocks, plastic bb's, glass doorknobs and who-knows-what-else. This is the kind of play I grew up with. Maybe it's just universal. My mother says she made me a map (when I was a toddler) of where my toys should go. Then, she says, she laughed at the idea that she had thought a map would work. I remember I giant wooden red cross (she says she bought me a wooden rosary because it was pretty), a Self-Help puzzle with African animals, the Fischer-Price school house and other toys, my Barbie Dream House--I mean Town House (the cheaper version), the Sunshine Family craft gallery, wooden blocks, fabric bits and odds and ends that were used to create worlds. Oh, play. It is such a good thing.
Sowsee and Dragon, both hamsters, spent time in my living room today.
This is their cage. The doorway is in the middle.
On Wednesday I checked out a book that Henry saw on the library shelf, Toys through the Ages, published in 1963 and printed in Czechoslovakia (amusing to me since I've been thinking of the Czech movie Alice). The book's introduction talks about possible reasons children play with toys: to learn adult skills in the same way that playing with yarn gives kittens practice in mousing; to release pent-up energy; to awaken distant human memories. Hmm...I don't get it, but it sounds intriguing.
This old leather coin purse came from Grandma Pearl's leather pocketbook. It smells awful, but Henry likes to play with it. The scratched-up end table is from my parents' home and the matryoshka dolls are a baby gift (thank you Debbie!) that Henry is now loving. I treasure this kind of play--the kind that integrates old smelly objects with shiny pretty ones and employs cheap plaster-of-paris Shrek banks (above), rocks, plastic bb's, glass doorknobs and who-knows-what-else. This is the kind of play I grew up with. Maybe it's just universal. My mother says she made me a map (when I was a toddler) of where my toys should go. Then, she says, she laughed at the idea that she had thought a map would work. I remember I giant wooden red cross (she says she bought me a wooden rosary because it was pretty), a Self-Help puzzle with African animals, the Fischer-Price school house and other toys, my Barbie Dream House--I mean Town House (the cheaper version), the Sunshine Family craft gallery, wooden blocks, fabric bits and odds and ends that were used to create worlds. Oh, play. It is such a good thing.
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