It started with cooking. Paul has been “cooking” oatmeal (aka magnets, blocks, puzzle pieces, etc.) underneath the television for the past year. Then I recently told him the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and we read James Marshall’s version, which is quite playful and fun (baby bear’s chair breaks into “smithereens,” for example). He loves the story, maybe because he loves oatmeal. He sits at the breakfast table saying “I’m Goldilocks!” whenever he eats his oatmeal “all up.”

Then a few weeks ago we played with puppets at the local library. We came home and he was jumping on his bed “doing a puppet show.” So I got some paper bags and said we’d make puppets.

“That’s not a puppet! That’s a paper bag!” my very astute two-year-old exclaimed with a frown.

But a few crayon marks later and some construction paper ears/hair and we had Goldilocks and the three bears.

Papa is frowning because he’s always mad (says Paul). Mama bear has a yellow dress. And baby bear has a t-shirt and shorts.

Then one morning I came down stairs and Goldilocks was in the garbage.

“I want a Blues Clues puppet!” said Paul. So we made Blue. (In the show called Blues Clues, which we rarely watch, the dog’s name is “Blue”. In our house, the dog is named “Blues Clues”.)

This morning we recorded a video of his puppet show. I must apologize: this is very long (more than 5 minutes). We did it again and it was shorter but it was not as cute (he forgot lines and went out of order, which is cute in it’s own right I suppose). And because I did the video on my phone (my point and shoot is not working very well) I cannot edit it in Windows Movie Maker (it’s .mp4 format which I can’t edit in). My voice is also very loud and Paul’s is too quiet. At any rate, you can hear Paul tell the story very well. He loves doing this.