PLAY-DOH IS THE DEVIL

I have some general rules to guide our toy purchases. #1 – nothing noisy, #2 – nothing messy, #3 – minimum number of parts and #4 – gotta make the kids smarter. I know, I am a heartless bitch.

But there is one guideline that trumps all the others – virtually any toy will become acceptable if it causes my kids to play alone, in silence, for long periods. And this is how we ended up with play-doh.

My neighbor lets the kids play with play-doh at her house. She taught me the two secrets to keeping play-doh as an effective weapon in your arsenal of peacekeepers.

The first secret is to hide it away 90% of time. It must never lose its glorified status of “off-limits toy”.

The second secret is to have play-doh accessories. There are only so many worms and donuts a child is willing to make. Eventually they will require additional stimulation for their imaginations.

I dug out the old packs we had received as gifts (yes, I know who gave them to us. You will be repaid for your “kindness”). I gave the kids a plastic plate, fork and knife and told them to have at it.

Eventually, the length of the peace accords started to look less like the EU and more like Israel and Palestine. I realized we needed nicer accessories.

The age-old modeling tools like a rolling pin and cookie cutter cannot be found anywhere. I asked all the moms at playgroup and visited every store they mentioned. They don’t exist anymore. All the play-doh accessories now are uber-complicated (read: require adult assistance). Cupcake maker, pizza shoppe (shoppe with two “p’s” – really???), barbie hair salon. Each box has 10+ parts that are impossible for a three year old to operate. I held out until I saw a set marked down to just 10 euros. We now own a pizza shoppe. Ugh.

It took me 25 trips to the table to reload the “cheese-maker” enough to cover the top of the dough. Does the play-doh product marketing department not realize that the only reason I let the crumbly, messy, “makes me want to kill myself” little containers into my house was because the kids could play by themselves? NO!

Then I discovered the worst part. The stupid pizza oven “bakes” the pizza by smashing it into a giant pancake. The end result is an appetizing vomit-colored monstrosity that can NEVER EVER be disassembled back into the original colors. My kids don’t care, but the sight of it makes me look like Monk on one of his good days.

Why did I buy this again? Oh yeah, so my kids could express their artistic abilities. So thank you play-doh. Thanks for giving me shitastic vomit-colored sculptures to “ooh and ahh” over for weeks to come.