We went to my brother’s house for a family dinner on Sunday. He just renovated his kitchen, and its new configuration allowed for viewing of the Patriots game while comfortably munching away at hot dogs and home made butternut squash soup. Mmmmmmmm.
My brother Chris has two daughters. My brother Tom has one daughter. My cousin Kay has two kids also. Together, all the kid cousins’ ages are 11,9,6,5,4,3,1. They all play extremely well together. Of course, this will change soon, and one of them will become the odd man/woman out. But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
Chris has a house full of girl things. His oldest is a princess in every form of the word. She is a total sweetheart, but every last bit of her is girl. She and her sister wear girl clothes. They play with girl toys. Visiting their house is like stepping foot on foreign soil for me. The land might look familiar, but I don’t speak the language.
However, it’s not me that I’m concerned with. I always grit my teeth for the first few minutes when we visit, waiting for one of the boys to come sulking out of the back of the house, saying that there are no toys.
It never happens.
Alexandra and Lauren have make believe kitchens, replete with plastic food-stuffs. The boys love to cook. It’s a match made in heaven. And when I walked back into the bedroom this past weekend and poked my head in the door, I was pelted in the forehead with a faux lemon.
“Daddy, we’re having a food fight!”
And plastic fruit rained down like hailstones amid laughter, both male and female.
A little later, things had settled down a bit. Alex brought out her dollhouse. Her dolls were cool, and actually had movable limbs. She also populated the dollhouse with little Disney Princesses. Aidan and Noah sat right down with her and started to play dolls.
I’ll say it. I’m not crazy about boys playing with doll houses.
I turned back to the game, not wanting to spoil a fun time, but not really enjoying watching the twins use the dollhouse. A few minutes passed, and I had forgotten about the entire episode. Until Alex came and sat down next to me.
“Hey Alex, why aren’t you playing with the twins?”
“They’re not playing dolls the way I want them to.”
Curious, I quietly walked back over to where the dollhouse was located.
I watched in amused horror as one, two, three Princesses plummeted to their deaths after jumping out the top floor window of the doll house. The remaining dolls somehow managed to climb onto the roof, only to find that the pitch was too steep, and they also dropped to their doom, with full sound effects in production. One doll somehow escaped with minor injuries, only to fall down the center staircase a few seconds later.
Walking back to my beer with a smile on my face, a felt a tug on the back of my pants.
“Daddy, come with me. I made somethin’ really funny,” said Noah.
I walked back to the house. Apparently, the doll house was, in actuality, a fraternity house. One of the blonde dolls was bent over at the waist.
“Daddy, that girl’s face is in the toilet!”
