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November 10, 2006 Frances Friday: You are not a shoe! 
Frances has a hand-me-down toy that I loathe. It is plastic. It has little translucent coloured parts that light up when music plays. The little tranluscent coloured parts are removable, and correspond to the part of a melody, and when that part of the toy is removed, that line in the melody stops playing. Oh, the evenings I have spent listening to it harrumph along in monotone while only the blue part remains inserted: "Bloop .... bloop bloop bloop ... bloop!" It is tinny. It is loud. While trying desperately to disable it this week by removing and hiding all of the coloured plastic bits, we invented a new game that is fun for the whole family. Toy hide and seek! It goes like this: Frances sits with Daddy on the couch, who tickles and otherwise distracts her while the toys hide (with some unacknowledged assistance). They only have short legs, so they can't go far. Frances is let loose. She peers under chairs and tables and around furniture and in boxes and behind toys and in plants and shoes and cups. She finds them. Sometimes she needs a wee bit of help, as in, sometimes it's right in front of her but she doesn't see it until I pick her up and point her at it. Then, "I found the blue one!" "Yay!" Erik and I clap. Frances does a victory lap, translucent coloured toy part held aloft. It is reunited with the toy, and she searches for another. As each rejoins its family, the melody is gradually restored in all its fully, plastic glory. Now, these toys are pretty clever, as you might assume from an ambulatory coloured plastic bit that knows how to hide itself in shoes and boxes and behind teddy bears, so Frances occasionally coverses with them on their way back to home base. "Silly toy!" she'll say to the red one, found in the case of pop in the kitchen, "You are not a Diet Coke!" "Sneaky!" she hollers at the yellow one, found upside down in the top of the bromeliad. "The blue one was in my snowboot Daddy!" she shouts. "Silly blue! You are not a shoe!" We can play this game for thirty or forty-five minutes at a stretch (and each finding session takes only about five minutes, so that's a lot of repeats) because I love to hear what she says to the toys as she finds them. "Are you a book? You are not a book! Silly green!" I love to see her wave them in the air, jump up and down, and run through the house while brandishing her find like an Olympic torch. I love to see her run, period, especially when it is from such evident excitement and happiness. She found the red! Again! This is even more exciting than the last time she found the red! Oh, my! There's nothing for it but to run top-speed and reunite this beloved red toy with its siblings! Her face lights up when she sees one. It's like Christmas morning, only forty times in forty minutes. And when they all are reunited, she jumps up and down like a hyperspeed rubber ball and shouts, "Again! Again! Again! I have to go sit with Daddy on the couch! And they have to hide! And I will find them! I'm going to sit with Daddy!" It's an exclamation-mark extravaganza. Posted by Andrea at November 10, 2006 6:37 AM under Frances Friday EMAIL this entry (comments fields are below this section) Comments If it's the same toy I think it is, we have that toy, and I've always liked it. It lives at my mom's place now, but the boys still bring it out often to play with it. I love the description of Frances playing hide and seek with the bits, though... we've done the same thing, sort of an easter-egg-hunt for the missing toys. The boys never get tired of it! Posted by: Danigirl at November 10, 2006 8:00 AM
I know that toy too!! It drove me bonkers!! It was given away last year. I like the idea of hide and seek with the toys. I'm going to have to try that game!! Posted by: LauraJ at November 10, 2006 8:14 AM
This is a wonderful description. I love how much fun the three of you have together. Though you've probably realized by now that when you want a toy to really disappear you'll need to hide it under cover of darkness. In a trash bag. In the garage. We play a similar game but with "getting warmer... getting colder" feedback. But it sounds like Frances is a pro without too many hints. Works reasonably well in other people's living rooms (like, during holiday visits). Posted by: Madeleine at November 10, 2006 9:39 AM
So I'll assume that switching over to relative font sizes this morning hasn't yet caused any readers a migraine.... Good! Dani, I htink it would be less annoying if Frances weren't prone to removing all but one of the instruments, usually the bass, and letting it beep along for thirty minutes. It is fun, and Dani, odd you should mention easter eggs, since as we were playing this one of the things Erik and I talked about was how much more fun she's going to have with the egg hunt next year. Posted by: Andrea at November 10, 2006 9:55 AM
Oh I could probably just fall over and die from the cuteness that is Frances. I love me some Francestime. Thank you! Posted by: yankee,transferred at November 10, 2006 10:28 AM
I love the exclamation points. I used to think (before I had a child) that the punctuation mark that would most represent childhood had to be the question mark. Now I have a toddler and conversations similar to Frances' happen in my home too, making me reconsider. Question marks are surely there, but exclamation points are it. They are the mark of discovery and delight. Posted by: amy at November 10, 2006 11:41 AM
Toy hide-and-seek is the best. I started playing it with Bub awhile back and it has probably contributed more than anything else to his receptive language acquisition: it was the only way I could think of to motivate him to decode phrases like "on the couch!" and "in the basket!" (In our version, I tell him where the toy is; sadly, this does not make the game any less challenging in our house!) That game gave me one of those bittersweet moments the other day, though: I was emphatically telling Bub where the lion was: "It's on the yellow chair! It's on the yellow chair." And he was looking around, obviously interested but somehow not making the word-object link at that particular moment, when suddenly the Pie hopped up off my lap, went straight over to the yellow chair, and got it. She amazes me every day - but scares me a little, too. Posted by: bubandpie at November 10, 2006 2:30 PM
Thanks for the Francestime! We used to play a version of toy hide and seek when it was time to clean out the toy box. I would ask the boys if they knew where their "x" toy was and if they could find it for me (all the while knowing that it was at the bottom of the toy box). Eventually we would find it and there would be much celebrating! Then we would have to sort through all the toys that had come out of the toy box and decide which were like long lost loves and which they rarely played with, and were ready to give away. It was fun. Posted by: Sue at November 10, 2006 5:41 PM
I just love that ability to invest toys and other objects with personality and the possibilities of conversation. What imagination! Posted by: Susan at November 10, 2006 9:01 PM
Her excitement over the whole game is what makes it so precious. Frances doesn't just schlump along through life -- why schlump along when you can run? And running while yelling and searching for toys? What more fun could be had?! Add a doting Mummy and Daddy into the mix, and you've got a winning combination there, every time. I wish I had more things in my life that made me feel this excited and joyous. :) Posted by: KLee at November 10, 2006 11:09 PM
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