Playing house, dramatically

When I was little, I remember spending hours playing house with my sister and brother. This typically consisted of choosing roles as mommy, daddy and baby and then acting out fascinating events such as cooking dinner, driving a car or holding the baby.

While Cameron is a huge fan of imaginary play, he has never played house until today. His version of house was a little different than mine, though. Most significantly, he felt the pressing need to actually construct a house. He had assigned Matthew the role of the baby and began assembling a couch cushion home for him. This was fine until he came to the roof, at which point he began to stack cushions on top of Matthew. "STOP! No cushions on the baby!" I yelled. When you are a parent, you often find yourself yelling things you never imagined. But, back to the cushions.

Cameron tried valiantly to convince me that Matthew really needed a roof on his house. "You'll just have to pretend there is a roof. You can't put cushions on top of Matthew, he won't be able to breathe!" I countered.

Cameron heaved a sigh. Now here I will pause to note that Cameron has a fairly extensive vocabularly for his age. He is also quite fond of adverbs and adjectives but doesn't always get their usage quite right. So, it was with great fervor that he responded, "Mommy. He will SERIOUSLY be able to breathe. DRAMATICALLY, I am leaving air holes!"

As you see in the following photos, even the dramatic air holes were not enough to convince me to allow for a roof.