The house of many hats

They say the hat makes the man. But at our house, the hat makes the Biscuit ... and sometimes the Dad ... and sometimes the Mom.

We have lots of hats.

Here are just a few:

We change hats several times throughout our evenings together. Sometimes I'm the cowgirl, Biscuit is the policeman, and Dad is a cowboy. Sometimes Biscuit is the firefighter, I'm police officer Mom, and Jeff is Police Officer Dad. Every once in a while, one of us is a baseball teamer or the zookeeper.

You change the hat, you become a different person.

I love that Biscuit's imagination is so big. He comes up with names and jobs and situations for all of us. He creates story lines and dramatic scenarios in which we have to rescue the people and find the lost dog and put out the fire and lock up the bad guys.

We ride our horses and tell the bad guys to put their hands on their heads. We call for backup on our cell phones and talk on our "hawkie-talkies." We hit home runs in the living room and run the bases through the dining room to the kitchen to the hall and back to the living room. And of course the fireworks are blasting all the while.

We rescue all kinds of animals and use a vet kit on stuffed animals and plastic horses. We make trips to the doctor where we have to tell the doctor what hurts and have our hearts listened to with a blue and purple stethoscope.

Right now, we have a massive racetrack set up between the living room and dining room. The racetrack starts on top of the dining room table. The first piece of track is clamped to the edge of the table. You let a car go, and it speeds down a hill, around a banked turn, down a short straight-away, then launches off a ramp. The other part of the track starts with a launcher that sends the cars down a straight-away through a loop, down another straight-away, then around a banked turn.

I don't care that I have to pick up all these hats every night. I don't care that there are plastic horses, assorted farm animals and cowboys all around the living room. I don't care that there are 50,000 little cars that always seem underfoot. I don't even care that the race track is bright orange, red and blue and doesn't match any of my decor.

All of these things are part of Biscuit. They feed his imagination and stimulate his creativity.

Plus, Jeff and I really like playing with toys ... especially the race track!