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Same Play Different Day: The House Hippos
By Tara Benwell

Unlike the rest of the girls in her preschool class, our daughter did not want to be something pretty last Halloween. Among the princesses, fairies, and ladybugs, our little hippo did not go unnoticed. It went without saying that she would need a hippo costume for Halloween as well as a hippo themed party for her birthday. While at first my husband and I were proud that she hadn't fallen for Dora or Barbie, we soon learned that in large doses, hippos could be equally annoying. Accustomed to the passing fancies of toddlerhood, we grew concerned as this preschool stage intensified with each passing month.  As we fielded the obvious question from family and friends, my husband and I began to wonder the same thing. Where did this fascination come from? And more importantly...will it ever end?

We've tried to pinpoint when our daughter's attraction became an obsession, but nothing specific comes to mind. At first, hunting for hippo stuff was fun for all involved. We searched through all of the dollar stores and thrift shops in our small town, and watched with amusement as the small group outgrew their cardboard hippo house. Family and friends contributed to the collection, bringing hippo trinkets from big cities each time they visited. Surfing the web for a generic animal proved to be more dangerous than the board books at the library. As well as cute coloring pages, we found stories and videos of hippos eating marbles, grass, and even human beings.   The odd hippo nightmare didn't leave a mark, though my husband and I soon realized that, like Sandra Boynton's picture book, the hippos were driving us berserk. 

As well as being frustrated by the consumerism and the repetitiveness of this infatuation, we began to wonder whether the behavior was normal for a three-year-old. Worried that Googling preschool obsessions would lead to articles on autism or OCD, I was relieved to find Jane Haddam's article, Preschool Passions Explained, featured at Parents.com Jane Haddam discusses the "all-consuming passion" of preschoolers and offers numerous opinions by experts on why this hippo thing is part of a healthy stage of development. Haddam explains that three and four-year olds use favorite toys and characters to gain independence and claim a stake on the world. In my translation that means the hippos are coming to breakfast at 7am with lights out by eight—whether they like it or not. For a second opinion I went to a reliable source of moms from my community. I was delighted to find that a number of their preschoolers had entered a similar stage. While our daughter brought hippos for show-and-tell every month, another three year old girl brought various wooly mammoths! Whether it was dinosaurs or dogs or Spiderman, most preschoolers had a burgeoning collection of something that ranked supreme. "It's different with five year olds," our daughter's Sunday school teacher promised me, pointing to her own daughter's pet-of-the day. "This week it's pugs," she added, showing me the mini collection. "Last week it was something else."

Though we may have another year to go, I am becoming more accepting of our little house hippos. When others question whether our daughter's interests have changed, I find myself siding with the preschool teachers. She loves hippos. It's cute. At least it's not Barbie. Besides offering her companionship and security, the hippos have also taught our daughter how to compare sizes, shapes, textures, and prices! Throughout our day they take her to imaginary lands where thankfully, at times, no one else is invited. And, like the hippos themselves, our hippo activities have multiplied and matured. We play various made-up games like Hide the hippo and Which hippo am I thinking of, and have turned favorite songs and rhymes into hippo tunes. The birthday party guests enjoyed their hippolatin names, while playing games like Duck Duck Hippo, What time is it Mr. Hippo, and of course, Pin the tail on you know who.

We do our best to "encourage a reasonable passion" as Jane Haddam suggests, though, there are times when even hippo alternatives seem too much to bear. Instead of grabbing a broom or the phone when the hippo blues set in, I've found a new lifeline in Jane Silberg's book, 500 Five Minute Games: Quick and Easy Activities for 3-6 year olds. Our daughter associates Silberg's book with giggles and can't wait to listen for the instructions of our first five minute game. With its simple and straightforward layout I can choose a game, scan the instructions, and explain our daughter's role before she can ask the dreaded words, "Do you wanna play hippos?" When this break is over, and she is desperate for us to get back to her four footed friends, I initiate a round of Hippo Massage, which has me stretching out comfortably on my stomach, closing my eyes, and guessing which hippo is rolling up and down my spine. I highly recommend this game to parents, which can be easily adapted to accommodate many preschool passions, especially four wheeled vehicles like Thomas trains. 

My Little Embryo: Reflections on the first year of motherhood
By Tara Benwell

One of the moms recently told me that after age one my baby will no longer be a baby. Not a baby? But her clothes are still written in months and she only just started sleeping in a crib. What a baby she is this one…thinking I may never come back when I’ve merely gone to take a pee! Even so, she’s a toddler, I’m told. She toddles.

 If I really think about it I must admit the baby has changed enough to merit the beginning of another stage.  Almost two years have passed since we talked about my little embryo growing eyeballs and fingernails. Since then she’s grown dimples and teeth and learned to feed herself and the couch. It doesn’t matter that she doesn’t have any hair; she already has seven nicknames. Okay, so she’s changed. But look at me? I’m Mumadee! Nothing about my life is the same. 

 One of the first things that motherhood changed about me was my purse. I tried doing the cutesy diaper bag thing, but even before I stopped giving baby’s age in weeks I had merged the contents of our bags, opting for my brown corduroy purse over her baby animal dufflemonster. Despite the initial selfishness, it wasn’t long before my personal accoutrements were tossed aside to make room for the princess’s necessities. Tampons, lipstick and coffee cards were no longer part of the purse. In their place grew an assortment of soothers that never succeeded as boobs, a rubber ducky with the beak paint chewed off (not the good one but a tolerable substitute), and a tiny container of Cheerios. (Who but a mom would know what those minis were for?) Besides the two diapers that always got shoved into the top for outings, there was an itty-bitty “size 1” squished beneath the wipes and rattles for months beyond expiry. It became so grungy from purse mites that I knew I’d never put it near baby’s precious toosh. Even if it was an emergency. Even if it wasn’t too small to fit dolly. A purse for two might seem tight, but who could part with the last newborn nappy or resist taking it everywhere as proof of what once was?

Leaving out the leave-in-conditioner step was never a consideration before motherhood. However, like the purse, my personal hygiene routine became slightly compromised after giving birth. One of the first mothering tricks I learned was to place baby’s bouncer seat on the bathroom floor, so that showering needn’t wait until (or be wasted on) naptime. (Besides the fact that transferring a warm sucky baby to a cold crib only works one in seven times, we moms have a knack for scheduling baby’s siesta during Oprah.) Later the jolly jumper became a permanent attachment in the steamy doorway. Though it sounded simple enough, I realized that you don’t get to just have a five-minute shower with the door wide open for all to see and hear. While you’re soaping up and rinsing simultaneously, you also get to have a serious game of peek-a-boo. Using the blow dryer, on the other hand, was one step that my baby insisted I maintain at least ten times a day for the first four months of her life. She became so addicted to the buzz that the bathroom appliance became a part of our living room and was no longer an after-shower affair. Though she outgrew the sound shortly after falling for the waterfall setting of yet another contraption, the blow dryer has never made it back to its home beneath the bathroom sink. Perhaps it’s mother’s intuition telling me that my sleeping-through-the-night- toddler-to-be will revert to a screaming prune if I turn that dream machine back on.

Another thing that has changed over the past year is my tolerance for all things gross. I used to wonder how a mother could bear to hold a child’s hair back while slouched over a chunky toilet bowl. Now I can reach down a human throat for a hunk of nana and even hold onto it in my own soggy pincer grasp for later.  And surely I’m not the only mom who has wetted her whistle on baby’s chunky apple juice. Nothing seems too gross after chasing my brother’s dog up three flights of stairs, hoping my washcloth mini would beat the pooper-scooper puppy tongue to the stream of liquid baby bursting at the bum. Seeing to a similar blast of baby bowels in an airplane cubicle just as the seatbelt lights switched on toughened me up for the not-carpet-fluff I found a few days ago on the nursery floor. In fact, solid foods have caused me to long for the runny odorless aforementioned goo of yesteryear.

In the past twelve months, my talent to compare and contrast has far exceeded what my university professors ever required. It started with stories of dilation and stitching and progressed to the much awaited, made-for-the-baby-book APGAR score. It’s a crying shame that today’s babies are compared even before they take their first poop. Of course, disposable diaper brands and what they catch are at the top of the comparison chart for new moms. I participated in numerous diaper swaps even before I learned the other moms’ names or phone numbers.  Learning the names of each other’s newborns was mastered at the first meeting. This was done out of pure necessity in order to construct a mental comparison chart of all the baby’s firsts.  Brandon was the first to tolerate a stroller without the bucket. Leo, the first to fear a bagpipe. And Baby Jaks, that’s ours, was the first of her peers to discover the human eyebrow. Do you moms have nothing more exciting to talk about? Yes, did you hear? Baby Mum Mum cookies just came out with a new vegetable brand!

So what if my shoulders and cuffs are permanently crusty and I carry bum cream and purple pain reliever in my purse? My hair with dark roots two inches deep feels softer and healthier than ever. Not that I’ve had time to accept such a riveting compliment from my husband, but my baby loves to grab a fistful and tickle her nose with it. Even eat it. Yum. Next, she bites me. She cries. I say sorry. It has been the best year of my life. I guess it’s time I stop telling strangers I have a newborn at home.