Playdoh Police.

One of the casualties of our move to Dubai were the tubs of playdoh belonging to the girls. The journey, the storage and the months since it was last played with rendered their tubs hard and impossible to play with. We are 'told' that the modelling medium is necessary for improvement of their fine motor skills and that, coupled with the fact that it's enormous fun, dictated that a trip to Toys R Us was necessary to replenish the stocks. Well, I was amazed. There is every hue in the spectrum. There are sparkles and there are sprinkles. And the tools available put my kitchen, which I previously considered to be well equipped, to shame. Of course, the sprinkles and sparkles won the day and we threw a couple of twisty and confetti makers (they look like sea salt grinders!) in for good measure. Once home, we opened all the pots and I spent a very stressful hour playing playdoh police because the first thing that Emily wanted to do was mix the colours and they had a fight over the purple pot. Emily's attention span is limited. It's a combination of her age and her personality and not much can engross her for longer than 10 minutes or so. It was lovely then to see her play for an extended period with Rosie. They cooperated and after the disagreement over the purple was arbitrated to everyone's satisfaction (we split it!), spent over an hour kneeding and rolling and generally making squidgy stuff. It was then that I realised that mixing the colours is just a sign that the stuff is being played with properly. After all, who wants a totally blue pizza or a caterpillar made from only pink? At that point, I stopped nagging and everybody was much happier. If many a happy hour results in sparkly brown playdoh streaked with blue and grey sprinkles, who am I stand in the way?