Tag: toys

Castle Babystar.

Published on by Darlene Dee4 Comments

I have a very serious question.

HOW DID THE TINIEST PERSON IN THE FAMILY TAKE OVER THIS WHOLE HOUSE???

Ok, for example, look at this dining room. There is a tiny dining table in the tiny corner and the rest of the room is a rocking horse and ride on horse and a bunch of blank space because Babystar likes to RUN.

dining room

Please also notice the living room. This ENTIRE AREA is dedicated to a teepee fort for Babystar. And the window seat holds her adorable toddler books. Including the new box of Baby Lit board books that I bought her from Costco ($15.99) thirty percent because I thought she would like them and seventy percent because if Babystar is going to take over the house, then her things should at least be cute. (All I read are children’s books. HOW ON EARTH do other parents read books?!? Genuinely asking. I keep a book in the bathroom and I read one chapter per bath so I will likely finish it by my birthday. In September.) Oh! That adorable tiny wooden bookshelf is from Ikea ($24.99) and it’s perfect for toddler sized books.

That window seat is actually pretty cool. It holds books and a couple of Melissa & Doug puzzles. One puzzle set is the really cool one she played with last fall with her cousins. I finally found it (on CLEARANCE at Target for $8.98) and Babystar LOVES it. I think it is the perfect started puzzle for kids, because you just match the shapes to create a picture. You don’t actually have to fit one particular piece into one particular place. Genius. The other puzzle was given to us by our only Colorado friend (so far). Babystar gets to drive the vehicles around the puzzle path to match them to their homes. I mean it: Melissa and Doug are both GENIUSES.

Over here we have the toy box corner. That toy box ($42) is FULL and it’s not even her only toy box. It’s her living room toy box. I don’t have room in this giant fucking farmhouse for a desk which I really need but we have a DOWNSTAIRS TOY BOX.

toy box

And do you even see this freaking train table?!? It is taking up some prime real estate in the living room just so Babystar can have a place to play dinosaurs with her rocks. Oh, and she plays trains sometimes too. Sometimes the Trolls ride the trains. Ok, it really does make her happy. And it was FREE thanks to an awesome mama on an awesome Boulder mama Facebook page.

train table

We shoved the couches and lamps and end tables into the other corner over there and you better believe she STILL LEAVES HER TOYS ALL OVER THE COUCHES. Dude. What.

living room

Also one of those ottomans is full of papers that really belong in a desk. Help. Me.

RAISING BABYSTAR: $26,955.75

 

Play. DOH!

Published on by Darlene Dee22 Comments

Babystar is Kid Number Three. There are some things I should really know by now.

Sure, Kid Number One and Kid Number Two were born in the last millennium. Before iPads and Netflix and Facebook Mom Groups.

But still. Play-doh has been around since the beginning of time.

That is probably why everything we see from Caveman Times is always brown. It’s Play-doh. All squished together. The fate of all Play-doh everywhere and everywhen.

Babystar has been gifted Play-doh in the past. I always put it up ‘for when she gets older.’ So we already have a hidden stockpile.

But then. We found the COOLEST Play-doh set at Costco for $19.99 and I totally bought it. I’m not gonna lie — I mostly bought it because I wanted to play with it too. Who DOESN’T want to make Play-doh Pasta!?

Playdoh2

Plus, you know, it’s getting cold outside. So we need some indoor toys. Like she doesn’t have TOYS IN LITERALLY EVERY ROOM OF THE HOUSE BUT SHHHH.

This kid is spoiled. Crap.

Be right back I have to go clean up some Play-doh also this is now my whole life.

I totally knew better. Is anyone else out there as dumb as me? What do you let your kids do/have/play even though it basically ruins your life?

RAISING BABYSTAR: $22,821.92

Mega Blok Party.

Published on by Darlene Dee9 Comments

Babystar’s favorite game lately is called BUILD A TOWER SO TALL TO THE SKY.

block tower

I have to use all caps so you can understand how to correctly pronounce the title of this game.

She has been playing this game with her very light foam blocks or her square wooden alphabet blocks with varying degrees of success.

But now we have over 500 Fisher Price Mega Bloks. ($63.56 with tax.)

This happened slowly. I innocently bought the 120-piece Treehouse Playdate pack of Mega Bloks for $14.99 from Costco one day. ($15.89 with tax.)

We came home and opened the box and built the tallest tower ever. It was taller than Babystar!!

I did some googling and realized that 120 blocks for $15 was a really good deal. The basic 80-piece pack is anywhere from $20 to $26 depending where you look. Unless you want the pink 80-piece set, which is mysteriously $14.99. I have found the exception to the Pink Tax. (Well, Mega Bloks and car insurance.)

I picked up another set the next time I was at Costco.

We really like the Mega Bloks. They are perfect for my toddler. They are basically Legos-in-Training. I know, I know, I totally love Duplos. But Duplos need a lot of snapping and pulling apart. The Mega Bloks just sort of sit on top of one another. And the protruding parts that fit inside the bottoms of the blocks are nice and big. This means they do not topple easily. Which is GREAT for my easily frustrated, poor-impulse-control-having, two year old ToddlerMonster when she is trying to build her TOWER SO TALL TO THE SKY.

(The set comes with stickers to make some of the blocks look like leaves or branches or whatever, but we threw those away. I personally think that stickers on blocks limit imagination, but you do you, boo.)

During a recent toy purge, I gave away the small set of Green Toys blocks that she had and never played with, along with a ton of other infant toys. This left an entire ottoman downstairs empty for Mega Bloks.

So I totally bought two more boxes of blocks. Fun fact: only three boxes will fit in the ottoman so one is still unopened just WAITING for one of her friends to have a birthday party. Or for us to get bigger ottomans, whichever happens first.

RAISING BABYSTAR: $22,723.14

Dear Fisher Price: Thanks, Boo.

Published on by Darlene Dee6 Comments

Babystar received some really excellent gifts for her birthday last June. I didn’t list them here because of course I didn’t BUY them, but she was a very lucky little two-year-old. (In fact, she got so many great presents that I immediately packed a few of them away so she could have new toys this fall. #momhack)

One of her favorite new toys is her vintage-inspired Fisher-Price cash register. These days she mostly enjoys popping in the coins and pushing the buttons, but I can see the potential for plenty of imaginary play in the future. Every single kid that comes over to play gravitates to that cash register. All of them. And some of the adults.


By mid-July, we were down to two coins. (The cash register comes with six.) No one was surprised. The ToddlerMonster relocates things like its her job. Every kid that comes over fights over plays with this toy. PLUS the new kitten is obsessed with the coins. I have literally seen her reach her little paw into the drawer and bat out a plastic coin and then carry it away in her mouth. 


After a bit of googling and searching the Fisher-Price website and eBay, I realized that I could not purchase replacement coins. Huge bummer. (Really, Fisher-Price, you should get on this.)

I emailed Fisher-Price asking if there was any way they could sell me some additional plastic coins. They wrote back that they were very sorry that they did not offer the coins for sale and they sent me a $25 gift certificate for anything Fisher-Price! (Or Mattel, or Hot Wheels, (but not American Girl), but LIKE WHOA SO NICE!)

I didn’t have to provide proof of purchase or anything, which is good, since the cash register was a gift. So, um, live your life however you like. But just know that you can email Fisher-Price about your cash register coins and they might send you a gift certificate for a free toy.

I’m actually not trying to help the world defraud Fisher-Price. I really just want them to manufacture and sell packs of replacement / additional coins for this super cool cash register!! But I can’t control other people. Yet. 

I couldn’t use the voucher online and it was a pain to use at Target, but the Target cashier eventually overrode something and made it work. Babystar chose a $14.99 “iPad”, and I didn’t get any cash back or anything. But hey! FREE TOY!

 

Babystar loves her iPad and keeps it by the bed with a pile of books. Most mornings she will play with the iPad and read books and drink her Unicorn Water while I have my coffee. WHICH IS AMAZING SHE TOTALLY WINS TODDLER OF THE YEAR. At least in our house, where the competition is admittedly slim.

PLUS, once we figured out that the CAT was losing the coins and not the BABY, we had a better idea of where to look. The current coin total is five but it fluctuates daily. 

RAISING BABYSTAR: $21,140.26

 

Our Couch Runneth Over.

Published on by Darlene Dee8 Comments

Babystar’s friends are taking over the place. We started sitting them on the couch back when there were only a few stuffed creatures, but as all parents know, those babies MULTIPLY. I think they are going to have to be relocated — but to where? Her bedroom is completely on trend with the new tiny house movement, but those tiny houses aren’t meant to house twenty six individuals including a family of bears.


We did purchase some of these — but most are gifts. Plus every time the Teenager visits her grandparent’s attic in Florida she brings back more of her old Care Bears for her little sister. Which is completely sweet and adorable but also STAAAAAHP.

In spite of our overcrowding problem, I just let Babystar bring home ANOTHER FRIEND from Target. We already lived with the Demigod of the Wind and Sea, so we needed Moana of Motunui ($8.99) to bring a little estrogen to Babystar’s boat.

PS: her boat is a salad bowl.


RAISING BABYSTAR: $18,099.13