Squinkles are now clean
I think it started because Madeline got a retainer, and she has to brush it with her toothbrush every day. As the younger sister, Mariana looks up to Madeline and oftentimes wants to do the same things she does.
But Mariana doesn’t have a retainer to brush, so she started brushing a squinkle. As everyone knows, a squinkle is a little rubber toy, about 3 cm tall, usually molded to look like little animals or people, and it comes out of vending machines at Fry’s and Straw Hat Pizza, and the girls have approximately 500 of them.
And so I noticed Mariana in the bathroom happily brushing her squinkle. As a parent I guess my first instinct was to tell her to stop it, because it was really weird looking and she seemed really intent on doing it. Whenever kids are really intent on doing something really weird it just makes parents uneasy. But after a brief reflection I decided there wasn’t any harm in it. We have like dozens of toothbrushes lying around the house because we seem to go to the dentist every other week, and then every time we go on vacation we seem to forget to bring a toothbrush so we end up buying more. So there’s no shortage of toothbrushes.
And I suppose squinkles get pretty dirty, so somebody should brush them.
Madeline realized how fun it could be to brush squinkles, so she joined in. An interesting difference between Madeline and Mariana’s squinkle-brushing technique is that Madeline gathers multiple squinkles to brush and lines them all up on the bathroom sink, while Mariana just brushes one squinkle over and over again.
Well, all the damn squinkles got cleaned. So the girls needed something else to brush. So they got some bowls out of the cabinet and started brushing those. So I was like, “Why don’t you brush some dirty dishes, and use a sponge instead of a toothbrush, and soap instead of toothpaste, and then you can start contributing to this damn family.”
They weren’t sure about that idea, because I think it made the game seem “too real.” But I let them “brush the dishes” in the bathroom sink, so I think that made it fun.
This all just goes to show, if you don’t let your kids watch TV they’re going to turn out all weird. You never know if it will be good weird or bad weird, but they’ll be weird.
Another thing weird is how Katia found the blog of her former LA arts teacher and posted it on her facebook. That’s a pretty weird thing for a kid to do, don’t you think?
