the land of make believe

I've had this play kitchen for the kids for a year now, but never purchased any food for it. Play food is about as expensive as the real stuff, and I'm particular about the kind of play food I want in my house. (I did see stuff at Ikea before Christmas that I liked, but then never got it...)

Anyway. Yesterday I brought the kitchen downstairs and shortly after Elsie was digging through our recycling. Genius, Elsie. I taped our empty food boxes up, found our old Ikea kids dishes and set up a little restaurant for the kids.

Just as I was beginning to stroke my Awesome Mom ego, Elsie threw the fit of fits. She did not want a graham cracker box. She wanted "A Crakah!" She did not want an empty bowl. She wanted, "Foo!" She looked at me with annoyance, clearly not amused by my taped up, empty boxes. What kind of stupid joke was this. She wanted food.

So I spent the morning teaching my daughter how to play pretend. Well, actually, first I gave her a bowl of actual gold fish crackers and actual raisins. And then I showed her how to pretend eat from an empty bowl. And pretend cut food on an empty plate. She watched me suspiciously while eating her raisins.