Playing Doctor and the Big Blue Blanket

Yesterday Emily was quietly taking care of herself while I put Nathan down for his morning nap. Once he was settled I discovered Emily applying Chapstick all over her face. She told me she was putting ointment on her owies.  This led to us playing a game of doctor as a diversion.  Emily said I was Doctor Cates and she would come and get measured against the wall. Then she stood on a package of diapers which was the scale.  We turned the package of diapers into a bench next while we took her blood pressure with my hand acting as the blood pressure cuff. We pushed the diaper package up to her bed to be the stool just like the big doctor’s tables have.  I checked her reflexes, her heartbeat, her lungs, her ears, eyes, and mouth with my imaginary doctor instruments.  Then she would get shots with a pretend pink bandage to cover it up, which she would carefully select out of an imaginary box.

On our second round, her heartbeat had a ringing sound to it and we pulled a phone out of her mouth. On round three we found a frog in her lungs that she blew out her nose. She named it Bed after looking around for the perfect name and declared it pink.  We found her little yellow frying pan to put it in because it was hopping all over our hands.  We also found a pink and a purple flower in her ears.  Round four we blew another frog out her nose, this time it was purple.

When we were checking her reflexes on round five, there was a frog in her knee. Emily decided she needed to swim it out and ran to find her swimsuit. She put it on and asked to put one of her blankets on the floor to be a pool.  Now this is when life got really exciting.

When I was a little girl my brother and I would pull out a big blue blanket and pretend it was our swimming pool. We would spin and dance and swim. I have vivid memories of listening to The Magus by Yanni as we swam on the big blue blanket.  For a wedding present, my mom gave us our very own big blue blanket.

Yesterday The Big Blue Blanket became a swimming pool. And we danced and spun around to Yanni.  Until the yellow frog hopped out of Emily’s knee and she was ready to play doctor some more.

Me getting caught standing on the piano bench.