Play D’oh!

Elijah isn’t into toys. There. I said it. As someone who spent his entire childhood hording plastic action figures and most of his pre-marriage adulthood hoarding plastic action figures, this depresses me to no end. Part of why I agreed to have a baby, aside from the obvious chore relief, was so I could buy toys and pretend to give them to my offspring.

While other almost two year olds are obsessed with miniature cars or plastic dinosaurs or blocks, Eli prefers to use them as objects d’throwing. Every few months, we’ll arrive home from Target with a new batch of toy experiments.

Oversized Leggos? Meh. Sesame Street figurines? No thank you. Imported Porsche die cast cars? Nope. Crayons and markers? Only for wall drawing.

I was on my way out the door yesterday and saw a note on the fridge. “Play Dough.” I asked Diana, “Really? Play Dough? Isn’t that a bit, um, lame?” I remembered the only thing you can really make with the stuff is a snake/phallus. And the little bits irritate your mom when you grind them into the carpet.

But after watching Elijah pour out the contents of a Bucket ‘O Blocks only to use the bucket as a hat, I figured what the hey?

So I did a little experiment. I bought a small batch of Play Dough, plus a packet of plastic figures from his second favorite TV show, “Yo Gabba Gabba.”

No contest. While he played with the Gabba plastic stuff for as long as it took to huck them across the room, he LOVED the Play Dough. He spent the majority of the day on our kitchen floor saying, “Squishy,” over and over.

Diana sat with him and made beautiful lobsters. I rolled a red wiener and said, “Look! A pee pee!”

I was banished to the living room where I could play with my Yo Gabba Gabba toys in peace.