Playing With Peanut Butter Play Dough

Over the long and lonely Memorial Day weekend, we got very bored. Christopher had his motorcycle safety class on both Saturday and Sunday (allll day), it was hot and muggy outside (I know, this is Texas, when is it not?), and the more time the babies and I spent together inside, the more crazy we all became.

One morning, after breakfast had come and gone, the babies were flopping themselves around on the floor like fish out of water. They were restless.

They went back and forth from the couch, to the window sill, to the couch, to the floor, to the window sill, to the floor, to the window- "Stop it!", I wanted to shout.

But rather than throwing pillows at them and then watching them crash down onto each other, the way that I kept doing over and over again in my head (it was a playful daydream, I promise), I came up with a better plan.

Peanut butter play dough.



I remember playing with play dough when I was a kid. I had a hamburger making factory, and all sorts of colors to go with it. I must have been 4 years old at the time?

Well my kids have never played with play dough (except for that one time that Eleanore lied to our friend Marisa, and told her that it was ok- that she plays with it all the time, even though its loaded with gluten and totally on our no list- naughty girl Elie).

Not having ever played with play dough- that just doesn't seem quite right, does it? That would probably be considered a Mom Fail to some.



I went into the kitchen, grabbed a jar of our WIC issued peanut butter, gobbed about a cups worth into a bowl, poured in some rice flour and some honey, mixed it all together with my hands until it was an acceptable consistency, and then called out...

"Babies, I made you something!".



After the argument about whether or not Eleanore is a baby (she hates it when I call her that, shes a big girl, you know) ended, we settled down to make a great big huge mess.

The kids were completely confused at first. It was squishy, like cookie dough. It smelt, like cookie dough. Yet... we weren't going to bake it? And... we could play with it?? And WHAT, we can EAT IT?!

Could there be anything better??? No.

...well, maybe making snow people out of it (says the 3 year old).



We poked holes in it, we pounded our fists down onto it and made "pancakes", we threw it at the cat (ahem, Charlie).

We crumpled it up, we snuck bites in between building cities, and- oh, peek a boo!

Charlie was done much sooner than sister, having eaten half of his weight in the stuff. But Eleanore- oh she couldn't have possibly been more pleased. She sat there, quietly at the table, playing with her gluten free peanut butter dough for over an hour.

Thats forever, in my book.



No complaining, no whining, no "I'd rather be doing this" tantrums. She sat there, like a peanut butter covered angel, minding her own business, building a house for piglet and a family of snow people to eat, until I told her play dough time was over.

And then when it was time to put it all away, she begged (almost on hands and knees), to play with it again after lunch time.

"Maybe if you're an extra good girl, we'll bring it out again tomorrow", I told her. And while she wasn't the best child that she could have been, she was pretty good. So the next day, she got to have round two with her peanut butter people.

And I got to have round two of complete and perfect silence.
And round two of the mess.