How To Make A Voodoo Doll - A Primer For Kids

If you follow me on Twitter (and please do: https://twitter.com/IsItHotInHereMM), you know that recently, my 8-year old said she wanted to make a voodoo doll. At first, I was a little concerned that she wanted to make one of ME (aka "She Who Yells A Lot"), but as it turned out, the victim is her brother. Whew! So why him? “Payback, Mom, payback,” she said. She's PISSED at him, big time, most of the time. So I let her make the voodoo doll. Here's why:

While voodoo dolls are associated with evil, they're actually meant to gain influence over whomever you're making the doll about. Diva is 8; her brother is almost 14. She weighs maybe 45 pounds; he's heavier and taller. She is jealous of him and the privileges he gets because of his age. If making a voodoo doll makes her feel better, I'm all for it. 

Here's how we made it:

1. We took an old shirt the Teen had outgrown. The doll is more “powerful” if you use a personal item from the victim.
2. I drew and made a template out of cardboard. I did it freehand, but free templates can be found here: http://www.allcrafts.net/dolls.htm.
3. She cut the material out using the template.
   
4. Since Diva did not want to sew, we used a glue gun to glue the two pieces together, leaving a hole for stuffing.
5. This particular doll will not be washed, so I used part of a plastic grocery bag to stuff it; then she glued the hole shut.
   
6. She then used markers to color the doll so that it looks like her brother. Note the red sweatshirt that the kid wears, no matter what the weather. On 100 degree days, he STILL wears the shirt outside.
   

Diva was giddy at the prospect of having influence over her brother while he had decided, quite kindly, to play along with the premise of the doll. He was at a friend's house while the doll was being created, but my daughter still took great pleasure at making the doll do a split, stand on it's head, etc. When we went to pick Junior up, she asked if he'd done the split or felt anything weird. He answered that yes, he inexplicably HAD done a split and had had a headache just at the precise moment when she was playing with the doll. “MOMMY, IT WORKS,” she yelled.

Because I helped her make the doll, I explained that it won't work all the time, which gives us some wiggle room when she wants her brother to do things he just can't be bothered to do. When she finds out the truth, my explanation will be that I wanted to see her to see what a wonderful creation she was capable of making and that I just wanted her to have fun. My sense is that she's going to become bored with the doll pretty quickly. In fact, as I write this, neither she nor I know where the dang thing is.

It's hard enough being a little sister. If making a voodoo doll empowers her, makes her feel better, then I'm happy for my daughter. More power to her! 

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Please check back in with me soon!  Oh, and check out my boards on Pinterest at  http://www.pinterest.com/isithotinheremm.

6 Games For Pool Fun When You Can't Use Toys

 

 

 

 

 

My town has two great pools, but the kids are not allowed to bring toys into the large, main pool. After they've place Marco Polo ad nauseum, they sometimes run out of games to play. So here are six alternatives:

1. Fetch (2 or more players) – Now, toys are not allowed, but goggles and hair accessories are. So one way we get around the rules is to use common permitted items that the kids can dive for, such as goggles (we even keep broken ones for this purpose), hair scrunchies, bracelets, etc. You throw one item and see which kid brings it to the surface first. Note: this can be played with one player if she competes against herself. To do this, time the player and see if she can beat her time in retrieving the object. 
2. Water Leapfrog (4 to 8 players) – Divide players into two teams. Each team is on opposite ends of the pool, standing in chest-high water with their legs spread apart. The last player has to dive and swim through the legs of his teammates and spread his legs. Then the next player goes. The team that reaches the other side of the pool first wins. 
3. What Time Is It Mr. Fox (3 or more players) – This is a variation of a game my son learned in preschool and it's awesome! One person is designated Mr. Fox and stands at the end of the pool while the rest of the players are on the other side. The kids call out, “What time is it Mr. Fox?” Then Mr. Fox says a time and the kids swim that number of strokes toward him. This goes on until Mr. Fox calls out, “Midnight!” Then all the kids swim back to the starting line while Mr. Fox tries to tag one. If Mr. Fox succeeds, that kid becomes the new Mr. Fox. 
4. Contests (2 or more players) – Which kid can dive into the pool: the furthest from the edge, make the smallest/largest splash, can do the funniest dive, can jump the highest into the pool, etc.
5. Sharks & Minnows (3 or more players) – One person is the Shark and stands in the deep end of the pool while the other players are on the side. The Shark yells “lunchtime” and the players standing on the side of the pool have 30 seconds to swim to the other side of the pool without being tagged. Anyone who is tagged has to join with the Shark and try to tag the remaining player(s). This goes on until either all of the kids are bored with playing or everyone has been tagged. 
6. Freeze (3 or more players) – Players gather in the shallow end of the pool with adults or bigger kids on their knees. Players define the physical boundaries of the game so that everyone can stand up. One person is It. At the signal, It has one minute to tag as many other players as possible. Once tagged, a player has to stand “frozen” and raise his hand. Before a frozen player can return to play, an unfrozen player must thaw him out by diving under water and swimming through his legs. A player can't be tagged as frozen while they're under water. At the end of the minute, count how many people It has frozen. Then choose another player to be It. Keep going until everyone gets a turn being It. The winner is the person who has frozen the most people while they were It.

Not being able to have have toys in the pool makes playing games hard, but not impossible. Use the activities above and challenge your kids to come up with even more variations of games they play on the playground. This Summer, like all, is unique. Enjoy it! 

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The Mixed (Candy?) Bag That Is Halloween

My Diva wearing Junior's Halloween costume

So the biggest holiday outside of Christmas is three days away: Halloween, that formerly pagan celebration where parents spend mucho dinero on costumes the wee folk will wear for one day so they can go door-to-door begging for candy. I used to get really excited by it, but after spending 13 years of this celebration as a parent, I'm getting a bit weary. I mean, how much candy do kids really need?

The first Halloween we owned our house, I arrived home at about 5:30pm and was just getting out of my car when I heard a cry in the street: “She's home! Get her!” I looked up to find a gang of about eight kids, in costume, running down the hill toward me, their goodie bags open expectantly. I quickly hightailed it into the house and had about a minute before eight little fists began impatiently banging on the door. Talk about a Halloween haunting!

Maybe that's why I feel so ambivalent about Halloween. While I'm delighted that my children have so much fun dressing up and foraging for sugar, there are aspects of the holiday I'm not so keen on.  All of the comparing, for example.  Who has the “better” costume? Who gets the most candy? Who gives out the best candy? Who went out the longest? Which neighborhoods have the best houses from which to score the most/best candy? Why can't they just, as the kindergarteners used to chant, “get what we get and not get upset”?  Also, there is often an appalling lack of manners in the kids who come to my door.  Unless the kids are little with parents behind them prompting, I get a lot of kids at my door who don't even say “thank-you” for the candy I hand them. When I take my daughter out, if I don't hear her give thanks at every door, we stop and review. 

And there's the grossness of some decorations.  I blogged some time ago about how I didn't appreciate how graphic some of my neighbors made their Halloween decorations. They put out some realistic depictions of dismembered bodies that little ones found horribly scary and repulsed me. While I appreciate “freedom of expression,” I also think common sense is in order and wish people would refrain from displaying stuff that scars little kids. And to those who commented on that post that I need to “lighten up” on this attitude, please  list your phone number so that those parents whose toddlers are up at midnight, screaming because of the display on your lawn, might call and keep you up the way the memories of your display are keeping their kids up.

Still, Halloween is fun. Many of the costumes are cute and clever and it's adorable seeing the kids scamper up and down my block with looks of absolute joy on their faces. Then there's the post-trick-or-treating candy negotiations.  When my daughter was a toddler, before she could even read the words on the candy labels, she held her own as she and her brother gleefully surveyed their loot and then traded for whichever candy each liked best. My favorite part of Halloween is, of course, after the kids are asleep and I get to raid their stashes for Snickers or Butterfingers bars. 


No, the kids don't need candy. But in this day and age when kids are being forced to grow up so fast and when they're all virtually addicted to video screens, it's nice that they can have one day of wild abandon when they can just run around and be children. My weariness doesn't matter; those negative aspects of the holiday are purely my issues. One day in the not-to-distant future, I'll be one of those older people who smiles wistfully at the little skeletons and witches at my door, remembering my own wee folk at that age.  is Halloween is truly for the kids. I hope yours have a happy, happy day!

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Thank you for reading!  Come again, won't you?