Figured I had better post something!  We’ve been under a lot of stress trying to make some decisions about moving.  Caleb has been playing with his trains nearly non-stop since Christmas.  Actually before Christmas.  We built a cool traintrack (2 stories!), and he played with that daily.

Since Christmas, he’s been playing Polar Express though.  He sings the “Christmas comes to town” song and yells out lines from the movie as he’s playing.  He’ll get ready to go down a hill on his tracks and he’ll yell out “I suggest we all hold on…TIIIIIIGHTLYYYYY.”  Anyway, he built a record breaking train tonight and his poor battery operated Polar Express train that he’s had since he was one actually pulled it.  Hard to believe if you know the train’s history of abuse (let’s just say it no longer works in reverse).

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Did I say something recently about us being easily entertained?  We’re a cheap date.

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…But we think it looks pretty cool.

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But now that I’ve seen the Sprig Discover Rig in person, I’m even more excited to give it to Caleb for Christmas.  This thing is about twice the size I was imagining.  Scott and I couldn’t wait to get Caleb to sleep so we could take it out and play with it!  Adults?  Yes.  Grown?  Not necessarily.

One of the best parts?  It comes in a cardboard box that is clearly made of recycled products.  The box has a large open window so you can touch the truck immediately.  The first thing we noticed was that the wheels have a rubber coating on them, so no worries about your floors.  Then, are you ready for this?  You open the box (no ripping required) and lift the truck out.  That’s it.  Notice any missing steps?  Like the necessity of a pocket knife, scissors and a WWF wrestler?  No tie wraps taped down with plastic braces and a mile of industrial strength tape.  No strong arming required.

The truck itself is actually made of recycled milk jugs and plastic containers combined with reclaimed sawdust!  It is extremely sturdy and built to last, and it has lights and sounds with no batteries!  I dare say this is the gift I’m the most excited about!  Now that I’ve ordered from FAO Schwarz, they send their book for the rich and famous catalog.  Seriously, a ten thousand dollar gas powered junior 1942 Willys military jeep (2/3 scale)?  If your seven year old is driving a vehicle that requires gasoline, you have too much money, here let me help you with that.  Anyway, the Sprig vehicles are in their catalog and Caleb picked them out looking through it the first time.  They just have a kid friendly look to them.  The rack on top is a soft rubbery material also, so no worries about it breaking.

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Okay, so Val over at Stinky John Jones mentioned in a recent comment that I should do a Christmas List post. I’m always up for discussing this type of thing, because twice a year, it becomes my CIA mission (for those who know us personally, there’s a pun there) to find the most unique items in existence.  Seriously, it is like an addiction.  An expensive addiction.  I will spent countless hours scouring the internet for obscure toys.  I hit all up my major natural and European toy retailers like Oompa, Maukilo, and Moolka.  Let’s face it, everything is prettier in Europe, toys included.  Beautiful long lasting wooden pieces.  Higher toy safety standards to boot.  Take a look around the Haba and Selecta websites.  Why can’t Walmart carry stuff like that?  I might hate them a little less.  And be even more broke than I already am.  But other countries, the US included do manage to make neat things, they are just a bit harder to find.  I like to do a yahoo or google search for natural toys or wooden toys and see what pops up.  I’ve probably been through every toy store in its entirety for the first eight pages of search results.

Now just in case I hadn’t spent enough time finding the toys and games, I then try to research them and see what other parents had to say about them.  I can’t tell you how many games I’ve thought “looked neat” only to find them on amazon.com with terrible reviews.  People saying the pieces broke easily or didn’t work correctly, etc.  (If you haven’t noticed by now, Hi I’m Rachel and I’m addicted to the internet.  It is my best friend. Just ask my husband. He runs to the computer chair if I get up to go pee just so he can check his email!)  So without further ado…

*Tip: I keep up with all this crap using wishlist.com so my bookmarks don’t become overrun.  Okay well they are anyway, but wishlist.com is awesome!*

Neat things I’ve found, but have not gotten/tested:

Baufix: I think these are a neat take on a construction toy.  Sort of like K’nex, only not.  They are wooden (scores extra points in my book!).  Caleb is big on the tool thing.  He likes to feel like he’s using tools just like dad.  He will get his screwdriver out to work on something that needs fixing.  If you are trying to super glue something, he wants to be all up in the middle of what you’re doing, whether you want him there or not.

Cargo train terminal (by Maxim I think): My mom saved all my Brio stuff from my childhood.  I can still remember my ‘train table’ back before they were such a popular thing.  Mine was just a sheet of plywood with rounded corners on top of a table.  We added an eBay lot of trains and tracks to the things from my childhood, and Caleb has been playing with train stuff for over two years now.  I found this train cargo terminal add on that has little magnetic “packages” to be lifted on and off.

Castle blocks: These are incredibly gorgeous.  That’s just all there is to it. Handcrafted in Indonesia, they are made of mahogany, only available at finewoodentoys.com

Lacing Caterpillar Box: Lacing seems to be on the list of toddler skills to be mastered.  But most of the ‘toys’ look so boring.  I found this adorable caterpillar box that seems like it brings a lot of whimsy and fun to the activity though.

Diggity Dog:  It’s no secret, I love kid games.  I made a mission out of finding ones other than Hungry Hippos and Elefun, after asking some other moms about games and hearing that one woman’s daughter beat the crap out of Ele”fun” when she was a little girl.  She got frustrated with it, and the mom just stood out in the hallway secretly snickering to herself!  I was surprised to find what a wide assortment of games you really can play with three year olds once you look past the Walmart shelves

Hugg-a-planet: Bigger is always better, right?  Click the link to see an adult holding this huge Earth.  Caleb loves his map, I think this is a great way to bridge the 2-d flatness of the map to the concept that it is actually a sphere.  find it cheaper here!

Traffic Dominos: I’m always on the lookout for anything car themed.  Because quite frankly, I didn’t know that such a thing existed as “car genes” nor that they could be passed down from generation to generation.

Melody Express Train: Each color track makes a different note when the train rides over it.  Build a song, and start the train moving to hear it.  Comes with a songbook.

Martian Matter: Some people say playdough.  Martian mud sounds cooler though.  This is something you actually can find at Walmart!

Wooden ramps racetrack: Cuter, safer and nicer than their noisy counterparts.

Plan City Deluxe Road System: For those transportation enthusiasts, notice the train crossing piece.  Compatible with most of the wooden train tracks, just make sure you have your railroad crossing signs up for those Hot Wheels!

Sprig Discover Rig: I’ve previously written on this guy.  Sound and lights, but no batteries.  This one is kid powered with interchangeable explorers from different countries, each with their own story to tell.  Read more here.

Hearth Song Memo: I have tried and tried to find this elsewhere, as I don’t particularly care for the overpriced shipping, but it is not to be found anywhere else.  All wood.  Check.  Flexibility.  Check check.  You can start out with just a few pairs if you’re playing with a younger child.  You can substitute other small objects or stickers under the little caps to mix things up.

Spinning tops: Courtesy of Etsy.  Careful, if you haven’t been to Etsy, you will become addicted.  It is a homespun eBay for handmade items.  No big retailers here.  Just skilled crafters and fine craftsmen.  Looks like a great stocking stuffer!

Marble runs: Click the pictures for individual product links There must be 100 different takes on this activity now.  The block and marble set we have, similar to this one, has been a big hit.  I’m partial to the types that allow more flexibility rather than the ones that have little room for variation in set up.  I’ve even seen a few that are ball tracks which I would assume from the pictures are big enough to eliminate the choking hazard if you have younger ones wanting to play also.

I even found a car/city themed one!

Tried and true:

Moon sand: What?  Wait, where are you going?  It doesn’t grind into the carpet like playdough!  Yeah I thought that might get your attention.  We do keep this on our screened porch though, and I ditched the “no mess” playmat it came with and just got a shallow rubbermaid container.  It is really neat too.  Lots of extra molds you can get, one set being a monster truck…molds for crush cars and a monster truck…yeah Caleb loves it!

Froggy Boogie: Don’t poke your eyeballs out playing Candyland.  This is an adorable “green” game.  100% made of wood, and the company, Blue Orange, plants two trees for every one used in their products.  The baby frogs are trying to sneak around the lily pads in the pond without being seen by the  mommy and daddy frogs.  Each frog has one eye with a frog on the bottom, and one without.  It becomes a game of memory trying to recall which eye to pick up, and practices colors, by finding the frog coordinating to your two color dice roll.  The pieces are just adorable too!

Bunny Hop: Another big hit here.  Even Charley plays (which just allows Caleb two turns in a row!).  Roll the dice to see which color to press down and then press your farmer to see if your bunny hops.  First one with all four color bunnies wins.  Of course, when we’re done playing a few rounds, we have to press down all the bunnies at once and squeal with delight when 12 out of 20 of them fly up in the air all at once.  Then repeat seven times.

Books:

If you haven’t tried out Lookybook, head over there and look around.  You can actually preview and read (if you squint) full children’s books before buying them.  It is a reasonably new site, so they are gradually building their book database.  But I found several of these books through Lookybook. Click the books for individual links

The longest book you’ll ever ‘read’ with no words!  We checked a Polo book out from the library and it was an unconventional hit.  Much like your 80 page long cartoon newspaper.  Don’t let that number scare you, it ‘reads’ quickly.  It is just a unique take on a book.  You can look through some of it at Amazon for a better idea of what I’m talking about.

Did I mention a car theme anywhere?

Thanks to Val for introducing SkippyJon Jones.  I absolutely have typed in Stinky John Jones looking for the books and become so annoyed when I couldn’t find them.  Caleb loves Skippy and has taken to calling people Mr. McPooh and bunny boots.  We get some strange looks.

Also available, SkippyJon Jones in Mummy Trouble, which we already have.

Woody Click Sets: We have the fire station and police station sets.  You can also get a construction theme, a farm theme or a hospital theme.  These don’t seem to have been a huge hit (retail wise), as they are a bit hard to find now.  We love them though.  They are similar to Playmobil sets, except they are made of wood.  The vehicles and buildings come into several pieces so you can arrange it any way you want.  A few more pictures here.

Coming up next: More books I’ve found, with a Christmas tradition idea/theme.

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I’ve been a busy little bee online Christmas shopping.  Or shall I call it Christmas scouting?  Looking for potential gifts.  Can I just say, I live for this time of the year!  I have a mile long bookmark list called “products” to which I add anything I see that is really cool and I don’t want to forget.  Then there are wishlists everywhere that I add cool toys or games to when I find them.  This first one, I think is super cool.

Check out the Sprig vehicles.  Battery free.  Made of recycled, environmentally friendly materials.  But just because it is battery free doesn’t mean it doesn’t make noise!  When it is rolled, a generator is activated to power up lights, sound, and even stories on the Discover Rig.  Interchangeable drivers from different countries all have a different story to tell.

Remember these?  The cardboard blocks that your dad could stand on?

I love little whimsical things like these.  This Zolo set comes with a spinning board to make a game out of creating crazy creatures.  I love the bright colors and funky looking pieces.

Using Val’s blog terminology, how’s that for a fluff post?   I got nothin.

I guess I could tell you about Old Blue.  My possessed car.  She’s a skippin ‘like a school girl’ as Scott put it.  He changed the spark plug wires (again) yesterday just to make sure we didn’t have a bad wire.  It is suddenly not skipping as bad.  But still skipping none-the-less.  This morning the accelerator got temporarily stuck.  That was fun.  I didn’t hit you!  My car did, I swear!  It is a old Ford.  My dad says that stands for fix or repair daily.  Several weeks ago, I developed a small oil leak.  Mother Earth, please forgive me.  It leaked three quarts in three miles!  Some tiny little sending unit gasket broke and well, we’re just lucky it didn’t lock up the engine.  Scott fixed it, and said, well it really sounds good!  I told him, yeah, til the next thing craps out.  I kid you not, the very next day, the air conditioning died on me.

Other than that, we’re pretty quiet over here.  I considered being snooty (and by snooty, I probably mean childish) to some daycare lady this morning.  We had just arrived at the park, and they brought the kids out to play (it was a church playground, not a park really, I know she was right, but still).  She asked us to leave, but not before trying to recruit us.  She asked how old Caleb was, and when she heard the answer, she said “Well why isn’t he in school?” as if I was breaking some law.  I almost blurted out “because we plan to homeschool” but I instead walked away and left Scott to converse with her.  I know, I know, get prepared, because the older he gets, the more I will hear “why aren’t you at school?”  It was just her tone.  Kind of like the lady sitting on a bench outside the grocery store last night.

“You look tired.”

A polite way of telling me I look like shit.  ”Well you could use a bath yourself.”  Good thing that was in my head.  I just smiled and cursed at her in my head and carried on with my non stop talking kid, my purse, my cloth grocery bags and a toilet slung over my shoulder.  Mental image right?  Looks like I’m moving in to the grocery store, I have so much stuff.  Just wait til I pull out the shopping cart cover.

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…we stop trying to outdo each other and work together?

“Yes! YES! They do have too much time on their hands!!”

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We had to break out a ladder.  Certainly you can understand why.

What goes up…

…must come down

I LOVE how he says “Yes!” toward the end!

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He still loves this, and so do I.  If you have a kid that is just all into this, may I point you toward the Haba marble accessories, they have all sorts of different and super cool pieces.

Caleb said, “Dis is so tall, it is even taller than de Awful Tower!”

Where is the Awful Tower you ask?  Why in France of course.  He took me into the hallway and had me pick him up to get the Awful Tower off the map and bring it in for a comparison.  It was indeed at least five times taller.

Oh and just an FYI, this picture of the Eiffel Tower came off my memory card titled IMG0001.  Do you know what that means?  It means I have taken 10,000 pictures with this camera.  Although an am surprised to say Nate beat me by over a year.  He took 10,000 photos in eight months.  I must say, I’m quite impressed.  And I thought I took a lot of pictures!

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