Tag: toys

Ponies and Cars and Ponies and Ponies.

Published on by Darlene Dee1 Comment

And a school. And some more stuff.

Last Saturday, I worked a booth selling donated books and games at a flea market to raise money for the Organization for Autism Research.

April is Autism Awareness Month. Almost everyone has heard of Autism Speaks and Light It Up Blue, which is cool, but if you dig deeper, Autism Speaks spends a lot of their money trying to find a ’cause’ or a ‘cure’ for autism. (Hint: it is not vaccines.) There are other organizations that spend more time and money advocating for those with autism and helping families with important resources. OAR is the latter, and I heart them for it. I digress.

I didn’t even LOOK at the other vendors until the ToddlerMonster came to visit. She wanted to walk around. Well, really she wanted to run but we compromised.

We came home with a vintage Fisher Price airplane ($10), schoolhouse ($10) and dollhouse ($5, not pictured because I think it is still in the van) that all need a good cleaning. (These might really be for me, but I pretend they are for Babystar. Or maybe the other way around? I think I need to do a post on ALL of the vintage Fisher Price I have acquired since Babystar’s birth…)


We also found other cheaper plastic airplanes for one dollar each ($4) and a yellow bouncy ball (free) and some old Matchbox/Hot Wheels cars ($5) and a stuffed penguin ($1) and like a million PONIES ($1). I only had one dollar left and Babystar kept pulling tiny ponies out of a giant bin of plastic toys and screeching in joy and hugging them so the girl selling them insisted that we take as many as we could find for that dollar. (I also bought a chair for myself from her mother so I don’t think we used Babystar’s cuteness to take advantage of them. Too much.)


RAISING BABYSTAR: $16,003.94

 

Worker (Ba)Bee.

Published on by Darlene Dee2 Comments

Babystar likes tools.

Since it’s kinda dangerous and pretty dirty and maybe illegal to let her play with the tools on my workbench, we got her a set of toy tools. (Yes, I said MY workbench. I 100% guarantee that my husband would agree.)

They are cute and sturdy and BPACDEFG-free and made of recycled materials in the USA. This is my first Green Toys purchase, but I totally dig them. I bought them at Home Goods so they were less expensive than usual. Which I also totally dig. ($16.99 instead of $27.99.)

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Babystar digs them too. She took the pliers on the airplane to Florida earlier this month,  and ‘fixed’ the airplane window. Whew. Those other travelers don’t know how close we came to a possible broken window. Babystar to the rescue.

(Note: I had to go to their website to look up the actual retail price since I bought them at Home Goods. They have a pink set. Gross. GIRLS LIKE BLUE TOO. At least the tea set comes in both pink and blue too. BUT STILL.)

And while we are on the topic of fixing things, the living room ball pit has been getting some serious abuse aggressive love by visiting older kids. It’s totally to be expected, and a large part of me wants it to break completely and be out of my life, but alas. Babystar loves it too much. So we bought some Duck tape (yes, Duck, that’s the brand) and fixed the broken loops. $3.77. She picked yellow, so they don’t match the other loops at all but whatever. Also, we took the ball pit downstairs so it maybe gets less abuse and so I maybe don’t have to look at it as much. Win-win.

RAISING BABYSTAR: $15,654.99

 

Ballin’.

Published on by Darlene Dee1 Comment

Once upon a time my little brother brought a slide into my living room for Babystar. Last month, he added a ball pit. It is her favorite thing ever. She plays in the ball pit every day. Her snowman plays in the ball pit. Her dinosaur plays in the ball pit. Her babies play in the ball pit. Errybody plays in the ball pit.

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It used to belong to her cousin V, and some of the balls were crushed in the past two years. Babystar has upped her stunt game to include diving head first into the ball pit, so we decided to Amazon Prime a few more balls for some extra cushioning. $38.16 for two packs of 250 Fisher Price balls.

Guess who stopped by when there happened to be a giant Amazon box on the front porch? Yes, the awesome uncle who makes ball pits appear in the living room as if by magic brought the box in with him. Of course I had to let him dump all the new balls in the ball pit for Babystar. She stared up at him with so much joy. I think she likes him better than me now. I think she likes him better than PENGUINS now.

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Babystar looks like a little turtle swimming in all those balls with just her head popping up. The new balls were smaller than the original ones, which actually makes for a nice mix. After two days of picking up ballsballsballs and putting them back in the ball pit, I took some out and hid them in a closet downstairs. She didn’t even notice, and now we have backup for when some of these get squished or lost or whatever happens to small plastic balls in this big scary world.

RAISING BABYSTAR: $14,263.39