Waiter, There's A Chicken In My Soup

In just two days my baby girl has learned how to drink from a sippy cup and to feed herself pieces of Cheerios. (Occasionally she does forget to let go of the cereal once she has it in her mouth). She is so proud of herself! As the water from the cup rushes into her mouth the initial look of surprise is quickly replaced with a laugh and smile.

We had some snow over the weekend, so my husband took our son outside to play and build a snowman. I am ashamed to admit that I have never taken part in this wintertime tradition. As has followed every snowfall so far this year, the air warmed up and the amount of snow decreased significantly within a day or two. The poor snowfellow in the backyard has thinned dramatically due to the increase in temperature and one of his stick arms has fallen off. The neighbor bought a snowman kit so their snowman has a black hat, pipe, buttons, eyes, nose, and even a little red scarf. He looks so cool. Our snowman is bigger anyway.

My husband, being a boy, has a small collection of rubber spiders. My son happily inherited these and I keep finding them lying about the house waiting to startle any unsuspecting persons. I don’t mind the purple spider so much as it obviously fake, but that small black and yellow one looks more real, especially when I am not wearing my glasses. However, my husband can tell you that I do not startle easily; as the possessor of nerves-of-steel I have not yet screamed, shouted, or otherwise jumped when one of these six legged rubber charlatans have crossed my path. My husband used to have a small rubber chicken that he would leave in out-of-the-way places (i.e. inside drinking glasses, in the medicine cabinet, under my pillow, etc.) to see if he could make me jump. He gave up after a couple of weeks. The chicken did find its way under my husband’s pillow once and was flung mercilessly across the room out of startled revulsion. I wonder how it got there?

Now that I am on round two of antibiotics I am hoping to be back to normal any day now. I have been woozy for a week and it has become a challenge to carry the baby and also avoid walking into walls. My left ear is completely stopped up and I cannot hear a thing with it. When a mother’s auditory system is only operating at fifty percent capacity it is difficult to ascertain the subtle sounds of a toddler getting into trouble. That is not a good thing.

Brachiostegoeuploapataceratops Rex

My son bought a large box of dinosaurs with some of his Christmas money. He wandered around the toy store for a couple of hours, unsure of what he wanted to buy with his newfound wealth. He is only two years old after all, and most grown ups would have difficulty choosing what to buy if they were let loose in a toy store with shiny plastic gift cards.

Really it was my husband who ultimately selected the big yellow/orange bucket of prehistoric lizards. Not that my son needed much convincing: he seems to think they’re pretty cool. According to my big boy all small boys need to have at least one or two (or twelve) hefty dinos. At first I thought that maybe BoBeans would be better with animals whose names he could articulate, but my husband assured me that little boys have an uncanny ability to pronounce dinosaur names. He was right.

Now, the trouble with plastic dinosaurs is that they have pointy tails. Pointy, pointy. My sweet little angel of a daughter is becoming extremely mobile. She rolls all over the place; I’ll put her down on the floor, turn around to eat a sandwich and, viola!, she’s four yards away and facing in the opposite direction. She is not an aimless roller: usually she’s aiming for something. If there is a choice between rolling two feet to the right to get her hands on a nice soft teething ring or rolling ten feet to the left to grapple with a pointy lizard, she’ll go left. So while I’m trying to enjoy a ham on wheat my daughter will be flinging a Brachiosaurus around by its neck while its tail dangerously darts about her eyeballs.

My son likes to play day-at-the-jungle: it’s like day-at-the-beach except instead of being buried in sand I get buried up to my neck in dinosaurs. They have a peculiar smell, all those plastic dinos. It makes me feel kind of woozy when they are all piled up on top of me. Therefore, it concerned me a little bit when my husband lifted an unsuspecting Stegosaurus to his nose, inhaled deeply and said, “They smell just like I remember them.” Aaahhhhhhhhh.

Do You Want Batteries With That?

My husband and I are in the process of choosing gifts to buy for our two little ones this Christmas. I have had a blast looking at toys that I remember from my childhood! It is hard for me to get interested in any of these newer toys because I just want to re-buy everything I used to own as a kid.

My son loves cars. And trucks. And buses. Oh, and did I mention cars? Anything else gets a smaller amount of playtime. I’m afraid to buy him the things I have such fond memories of because I’m liable to get mad if he doesn’t love them as much as I did! My baby loves to touch and look at anything within her reach, so maybe I’ll just get something for her that she’ll be able to play with in a couple of months, or years. At least she’s likely to be interested in it!

Toys were so much simpler when I was little. Not so many flashing lights; not so many dead batteries to replace. Toys like: the Chatter Phone, the GloWorm, and the Fun 2 Imagine Cash Register. (Fun to imagine- in other words, it doesn’t have twenty-five buttons to push that all produce ear-splitting sounds and music). I used to love the Sit ‘N Spin. The thought of sitting and spinning now makes me sick to my stomach, but when I was a kid it was the best! My three sisters and I all loved our bed tents too. Yessiree. Pound Puppy bed tents. So cool.

Perhaps it is because I had a happy childhood that I feel like my kids cannot possibly have a memorable childhood without these particular items. I am sure that as they grow up they will remember certain toys of their own with a smile and want to pass those on to their children. At least my mom kept our blue Going to Grandma’s suitcases. I think she may have had an ulterior motive with that one.

Santa has something for everyone on your list

My girlfriend and I took the kids to the mall yesterday to walk around and so that my son could look at the Christmas trees. This is becoming a favorite past time of his already. It was a pleasant surprise to see that the little mall elves had put up the huge mall tree already. The little man did not like this one as much as the smaller trees in the department stores because this one had a rope around it making it off-limits to small hands.

He is at the age where the days of walking past the toy store without going in are over. I enjoy watching him explore all of the different toys. This may cease to be enjoyable if he reaches the temper-throwing stage because he cannot take everything he sees home with him, but right now all he wants to do is browse and mash buttons. Kids these days must be born with a button-seeking sensor; he can locate a push button in no time flat.

We spend most of our time in the car/truck aisle. Yesterday was no exception. If this is any indication of what to expect when holiday shopping this year I am a little frightened: in between the fire engines and the racecars sat a jeep with two bobble-headed hunters sitting in it. How did I know they were hunters, you may ask? It was a pretty safe guess for the reason that both were sporting orange vests. However, the dead buck roped to the hood of the vehicle was what clinched it for me. A jab to the button started a song (for the life of me I can’t remember what it was) to which the hunters’ heads bobbled and their mouths snapped open and shut as if in song. Once the lifeless deer lifted its head and joined in the song the toy completed its journey into the part of my brain that registers the ridiculous.

What will those builders of toys think of next? If toys like this can be made my husband would quickly rise to the top of the field if he were employed as a Toy-Thinker-Upper. So, dear shopper, keep your eyes peeled for strange and unexpected playthings this holiday season as you comb a toy store near you for that one-of-a-kind Christmas present.