Welcome to the Dollhouse

Or should I say Dinohouse.

Bunny received a lovely doll house for Christmas. It has 4 rooms, furniture and a little doll family. While she has in the past stated that "dolls are no fun" she has appeared to change her tune when it comes to doll houses. Everytime we see a doll house at a store or someone's house, she stops to play with it. She plays with the occupants of the house and seems to enjoy it.

So when Santa offered a doll house for Christmas, I agreed. Maybe my little girl would play with dolls after all.

I should have known better. After all, the residents of the zoo, barn, fairy house, plane and bus have all been displaced. These animals and people no longer reside in their original homes but in a big plastic bin. The dinos have taken over everything and with 31 dinos they need a lot of space.

And they took over the doll house as well. It was mass chaos in the doll house yesterday morning. The furniture was turned over and at times ejected from the house as the dinos took over. The poor family took to cowering under the staircase so they wouldn't be trampled. The dinos hung out the windows, lounged in the beds and ripped the roof right off the house. And Bunny could not have been more pleased.

When asked where the people were going to live. She looked around the room and said "the shopping cart". But when she got to the cart she realized that was where the lizard family lived. Hmm, maybe in the pink bin? No that was where the instruments are. The doll stroller? That would make sense. No. The stroller was currently occupied with a ball of yarn stolen from Mommy.

With no logical place to put the doll family, they were uncerimoniously dumped out of the house. They are no laying in a corner looking stunned and forelorn. Sorry dolls, I'm sure you are a nice family. Its just that dinos rule the roost here.

Definintion

decheese
dee - cheez
verb

To remove cheese from a person or object. (After Bunny fed baby T-Rex a snack, mommy had to decheese him.)

Its a Leopard Dino Cat

Ah the joys of asking a two year old what they want to be for Halloween when they don't really understand what it means. For weeks Bunny said she wanted to be a kitty. Great, we've got the black clothes so we just had to buy ears and a tail. Done and done.

But I wondered, wouldn't she want to be a dinosaur. She's obsessed with dinosaurs. Should I just buy a dino costume? So I asked her and she said no, she wanted to be a kitty. Ok I'm holding you to that.

Then she said she wanted to be a tiger. I can work with that. I could buy a orange sweatshirt and some black felt. I could do that, but I was feeling kind of lazy. How would you like to be a leopard? You've already got the coat. Ok, leopard it is.

Then Sunday rolls around and we are getting dressed for trick or treat. Come on Bunny, lets put on your ears and tail. "Why, momma?" Because you are going to be a leopard kitty. "No I wanna be a dino." What? Why did I listen to you? I should have just bought the dino costume and been done with it.

But Bubs swooped in to save the day. You are going to be a leopard dino, he proclaimed. "Oh ok, daddy. I love leopard dinos."

Bet you've never seen a Leopard Dino Cat before.

Dolls Are No Fun

There were several moments this weekend that captured the essence of Bunny, exactly who she is right now.

She was looking at some leaves we had found the day before. "What this leaf, momma?" That is a maple. "What this one?" That is an oak leaf. "What this one?" I don't know honey. "Let's go look it up on the computer, momma." Yes, that is right, at 2 2/3 she knows that you can find the answer to all things on the computer.

During the car ride to the pumpkin farm she was telling me everything she and daddy had played with that morning. Did you play with Dinos? "Yes." Did you play with playdough? "Yes." Did you color? "Yes." Did you play with dolls? "No. Dolls are no fun."

Watching me put on lipstick, "can I have some lipstick, momma?"

At the apple orchard, stuffing her mouth with an apple with one hand while picking up all the fallen apples and throwing them away with the other.

While on the hayride, "Are the cows gonna eat this hay later, momma?"

While picking pumpkins, "I don't wanna hold the pumpkin, its dirty."

Another family at the farm found a caterpillar which was passed around to all the kids on the hayride. While holding the caterpillar "its tickly momma. Can we keep him?" No honey he lives at the farm. "I love the caterpillar momma."

She loves dinos and hates dolls. She is fascinated by bugs and science but doesn't want to get dirty. She wants to learn about everything and wants to wear lipstick to look pretty while doing it. That is my Bunny.

Good Parenting or Enabling

I may have mentioned, once or twice, that my daughter is obsessed with dinosaurs. She has, at last count, 1,000,000 dinos or something like that. She knows their names and she knows whether they are plant or meat eaters. Its kind of scary.

So I decided to take a look at all of the dino paraphernalia that she has. At our house she has 5 unidentified bath/pool toy dinos, a dino puzzle with seven pieces and 8 plastic dinos (I could give you a who's who but you really don't want to know). Not too bad. She also has 3 dino books. A recording of the movie Dinosaur, which is watched in some part at least once a day. And at least two dinos are carried in her little red purse everytime we leave the house.



At my mom's house she has the same bath/pool dinos, a one armed T-Rex (according to her his arm will grow back), several other unidentified dinos, 5 finger puppet dinos and 5 wind-up dinos. She also has (on loan from my mom's library at school) 10 books on various dinos, including Megalodon, Apatosaurus and Velociraptors. She practically has the books memorized and always wants to see the skeleton pictures at the end.



And now its gotten to the point that if I see a dinosaur, I'll buy it for her. Whenever I'm at Target, I rummage through the bins to see if I can find a new one she doesn't already have (last time I scored a Gigantosaurus). They have a mini-dino set with 15 dinos and fake palm trees that I totally want to buy but I am afraid it will contain repeats of what we already have. And yesterday when I was buying a new shredder at an office supply store, I seriously considered buying a Stegosaurus calculator. But then I realized she can't do math yet so I skipped it. This time.

Maybe we've got a budding palentologist on our hands. Or maybe not. But for right now Bunny's dinos are like dolls to her. Yesterday we put on some tunes and had a good old fashion dino bash. Bunny served refreshments of chocolate cookies and vanilla juice. (Which if you didn't know is made by sticking a cardboard tube into a teapot. Its very tasty)




Parasaurolophus and Spinosaurus where having a dance party. They tried to start a dino mosh pit but Gigantosaurus was having none of that. So then they started pogo bouncing on their tails. Well that got the crowd going and soon Stegasaurus, Brachiosaurus and Triceratops joined in. And T-Rex accompanied us on the trumpet. It was a kick ass party and a good time was has by most. Except for Euoplocephalus (or as Bunny calls him Minmi, which is a similar looking but different dino) who decided to take a nap.

So I may chill out on buying new dinos for the time being. But I'm going to revel in the dino mania for as long as it lasts

Dinosaur Roar

Bunny is a bit obsessed with dinosaurs. It first started when my parents had a rubber T-Rex at their house. She loved to play with it every time we went there. The T-Rex will even sit at the dinner table and "eat" the occasional green bean. My mom also had a puzzle book with other dinosaurs. Bunny could say Iguanadon before she was two.

So I got her a dino puzzle of her own. She loves to take the wooden pieces out and play with them. They were toys rather than puzzle pieces to her. Given this interest in dinosaurs, I found a few books. I got her My First Dinosaur Board Book. She loves it. There are tons of pictures of dinos - most of which I didn't even know existed with names I can't pronounce. But Bunny knows most of their names. In fact if I show her a picture of a certain dino she will say "that's Coelophysis" so matter of factly as if I should have known. Silly mommy.

While shopping without Bunny yesterday I found some toy dinos - a T-Rex, a stegosaurus, a triceratops and a brachiosaurus (although it could be a barosaurus but Bunny calls it a brachiosaurus so that is what it is). The first thing Bunny did when she saw them is take them to meet their wooden counterparts. She lined them all up next to eachother and introduced them. Too cute.

So today Daddy has the day off and we are taking Bunny and the new dinos to the museum to meet their life sized counterparts.