Gabe's First Tea Party

And, no, this wasn't Gabe's first attempt at organizing a group of people protesting the existence of the government agencies and services that all of them, ironically, would be very angry about losing in an attempt to stave off "socialism" and other trendy bogeyman ideals that they imagine are destroying their nation despite the complete lack of any evidence to support the notion. Nope. This was a traditional, sit on the floor on a blanket and feed your stuffed animals some pretend tea kind of party.

Where he got the idea for it, I'm not sure. We've not done anything like it before. And, though I remember Ruby having a tea party on Max and Ruby once, we haven't seen that episode in weeks and, to my knowledge, none of the other shows he's seen have suggested the idea. The kid is starting to come up with crazy ideas all on his own, and I definitely appreciate that development because it means more organizational duties for me to arrange the things he wants but less initial creativity for coming up with the ideas (something I've always been a bit lacking for, at least as far as children's games go).

So, I sent Gabe upstairs to get everything he thought he'd need to have a tea party for Norah, him, and me--then we added Burgess and Amy, two of his favorite stuffies, a little while later. After about ten minutes, he had gathered six cups, one plate, a wooden spoon, and a plastic slotted (or is it slatted?) spoon. Not EXACTLY a successful first attempt, but not too shabby. I sent him back up for four more plates and tried to talk him into bringing down some of his play food. He managed two more plates but then promptly lost interest in getting any more supplies. So we got started.

Pretty much immediately after he brought down the last plates and we set them on the floor in an orderly fashion (Gabe deciding that he wanted to sit in the middle of all the action instead of around the Kung Fu Panda blanket we used for our picnic), Norah decided that she could contain her participation no longer. I didn't even have time to grab the camera and capture a picture of the setup for posterity.

Once we were set up and ready to go, we began our party.

Chaos ensues. Perhaps tea parties are still a bit advanced for the participants involved.

Gabe was incredibly disappointed that the cups were empty and refused to grasp the concept of imaginary tea, insisting, instead, that I fill his cups with water. I compromised and put a little water in one of his cups but told him he had to drink it up at the table (which is currently functioning only as a play-doh station right now). Not surprisingly, this ended in disaster a few minutes later as his game shifted from "tea party" to "pouring the water from one cup to another and then all over himself and the furniture." This is exactly the reason why I only put about an inch of water in the cup, because I suspected that he wouldn't be able to follow the "water isn't a toy" rule.

It didn't take long for Norah to take over the proceedings, as is almost always the case. Less than three minutes after our tea party started, it was over. Five minutes from the start (and about a minute after I stopped filming), Gabe was soaked in water and Norah had bonked herself on the head with the metal cup she was playing with and started crying (she's a bit of a sissy--or, at least, she seems like one when we compare her to Gabe when he started getting around. Unless he pinched a finger in the door or hit something HARD, he barely shed a tear, but she'll cry if she tips over and lands on a cushion). Oh well.