Toyland

[naomikritzer]

Since it's December, I have -- of course -- done some toy shopping. It's a compulsion. Neither kid, in point of fact, asked for any toys. Molly asked for books; Kiera asked for a snow globe. But there are things I like for them to have, and things I think they'd enjoy, and it's a lot of fun to delight your kid, and so -- toys.

They already have a ton of toys, of course. The thing that's interesting is that they play with a really narrow selection of them, constantly. What they play with:

1. Dolls. They have quite a few, and will sometimes get out every single doll and play school, or day care center, with all of them. Kiera likes to 'read' to her dolls. (She's not reading yet, but she'll make up a story while showing them the pictures and turning pages, which is adorable.) Some of the stuffed animals also get in on the act, though mostly all but a few gather dust in the basket where they're stored.

2. The pop-up play houses. They have a play house, a tent, and a couple of pop-up cubes, all of which get hauled out semi-regularly.

3. The laundry baskets. These are not technically toys, but you'd never know it, considering how much they get played with.

4. Blankets. See #3.

5. Board games. Molly's current favorites are Clue, Life, and Set. Kiera's are Hi Ho Cherry-O and Memory, though I'm not sure she's yet gotten through a game of Memory without either losing her temper or getting bored. Molly took over for her the other day after she quit mid-game and proceeded to beat the stuffing out of Ed. Back when she was four I attributed her skill to pre-literate visual memory, but no, apparently she's just really good at it.

6. The kitchen toys. We keep them in a large pot with a lid. They include a plastic tea set I got years ago, with some miscellaneous fake food, plus two rotary eggbeaters I picked up at a thrift shop.

7. The art supplies. There's a lot more here than any normal parent would consider necessary, but art is such a wholesome and pleasant activity and they both enjoy it so much that I keep them well-stocked.

8. The Polly Pockets. These are teeny-tiny dolls with teeny-tiny plastic clothes and teeny-tiny cars to drive around in. These have gotten far more play over the years than the sturdier and better-equipped Barbies.

In the past, the list has also included:

9. Play-Doh. They still get it out sometimes but it's not nearly as exciting as it was once.

And at least at the moment there's also:

10. The Leap Pad. Kiera got this for her birthday, and still takes it out to play with pretty regularly.

Most everything else got played with a lot when new, and now mostly stays on the shelf unless a visiting friend gets excited about it.

Of course, if they see something being removed, it's their favorite toy in the WORLD and they desperately want to keep it. Better mothers rotate toys in and out from a closet in the basement, so that neglected toys have a chance to be new, fresh, and exciting for a month out of the year and are out of the way the rest of the time. I've tried this, but when the toy comes back upstairs they get excited and play with it exactly once, and then it goes back on the shelf and continues to be ignored. Which is very frustrating when it's something that on some level I feel like they ought to play with, like blocks.

They're each getting another game for Christmas, and some doll clothes. And Kiera is getting a toy accordian. (Unless the purple ukulele turns up, but after sending me a confirmatory e-mail, Amazon appears to have lost the order completely, so I'm not holding my breath.) And Molly is getting a pile of books, and Kiera is getting a snow globe.

I predict that nothing they open on Tuesday will have the entertainment staying power of the laundry baskets.

Comments

[gelsey.livejournal.com]

Apparently I had a thing for laundry baskets when I was a kid as well. LOL. Good to know they don't go out of style.

Barbies, dolls of all sorts, and my toy horses. And books books books. My rug and desk got a lot of use as house/lake/estate/etc, anything that I needed for said dolls and horses.

Never did want any of the Barbie houses because it was so much easier pretending when I didn't have set parameters.

[peacockharpy.livejournal.com]

Laundry baskets, definitely. Laundry baskets WITH blankets is the best combination.

Meg, oddly, does not do dolls... but she has lots and lots of animals, small and large, stuffed and plastic. She rotates through them at a good clip. Currently, she's into Littlest Pet Shop, which is much like Polly Pockets in its teeny-tininess. There might be an upsurge in doll attention after the baby arrives, but it's more likely she'll "baby" her stuffed animals. (I also predict an upsurge in use of the cooking toys, since Ratatouille is showing up for Christmas.)

[naomikritzer]

Yes, typically the laundry baskets and the blankets are out being dragged around at the same time.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Somewhere there must be kids who really, really love to play with stuffed animals. Right? Because otherwise there's no explanation for (a) the massive size of the stuffed animal industry, and (b) the number we receive as gifts.

If we had the slightest bit of room for one, Alex would prize a pop-up play house above all things.

Little figures, and places for the little figures to be, are huge right now. Last weekend we visited my parents and essentially I never had to worry about or entertain my child all weekend long, because my parents have a closetful of the old Fisher Price Little People sets. She's getting a castle and an assortment of medieval figures for Christmas, which I hope will be an equally lasting hit.

[peacockharpy.livejournal.com]

It's my daughter. She takes care of stuffed animals like some kids take care of dolls. I predict a future in veterinary medicine (or, worse, a future of me having to deny her plans for adopting every stray in a 50-mile radius)...

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

The local 7-year-old is also very fond of stuffed animals. And hard plastic toys that would be called dolls if they were humanoid, but they're mostly dragons and horses. When I was told "all shared toys have the letter S written on their hooves, to mark them as shared toys and reduce conflict," I had to ask if there were any shared toys that didn't have hooves? No, not really.

[naomikritzer]

LOL at all of them having hooves.

Molly loves to ride horses but is not particularly interested in the small plastic kind.

[naomikritzer]

The pop-up playhouse is only about 3'x3'. My kids usually play with it on the living room rug.

Regarding stuffed animals -- when I studied in Nepal, I took along my stuffed tiger that I'd had since I was seven. This is a really ratty, grubby little stuffed critter -- he came with me to college, so I took him to Nepal, as well. The young (two-ish) cousins of my host family were absolutely fascinated by Tigey and would play with him the whole time they were over. They didn't have any stuffed animals themselves, and I never saw any for sale there, though I did see other toys. If American kids had just one or two stuffed animals each they'd play with them. As it is, most kids select one or two that they treasure, and the rest are just clutter.

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

My five-year-old has an entire menagerie. Half of the beasts live in a container in her closet, and the other half are lined up (at least, when she's just been made to tidy her room, they are lined up) on either side of her bed. She does interact with them, in two main ways: (1) every week or two one of them becomes the favoured bedtime creature; (2) in the aggregate, they become the audience for her dance performances, magic shows, etc. Occasionally they will be sorted into family groups (usually by species, but sometimes by colour), and once she had a wedding game going on for three or four days that involved all the cats and a couple of the smaller bears.

The laundry-basket-cum-blanket apparatus, however, is definitely a staple of the Top Five around here, along with the empty cardboard box, the stack of couch cushions, the long cardboard tube, and the assorted art supplies.

I've always felt that the best gift you could possibly give any family with small to middle-sized children would be the cardboard box from a refrigerator.

[naomikritzer]

Yes indeed.

We bought a new patio table and chairs last summer, and the box the chairs came in was enormous, very similar to a refrigerator box. It sat in our living room for weeks. Eventually I evicted it (and later disposed of it) because it took up so much space, but if we had a larger house -- or, say, a finished basement play room -- they'd still have it.

Animals - 15 month old

[(Anonymous)]

I was surprised to hear that many kids didn't like stuffed animals. My 15 month old loves her stuffed animals. Perhaps this will change, but right now, they are consistently her favorite things besides blocks (and stacking toys in general). She puts them to bed, carries them around, sleeps on top of them, uses the bigger ones as chairs, dresses them, etc. Though right now, Cassidy plays with all her toys in succession, so perhaps this will change.

-Martine

[jmartin2.livejournal.com]

I put out a cry to all gift-givers this season that no new stuffed animals should come into the house, and behold, they all obeyed, and we whittled down the existing collection, and now they all fit in a large-ish laundry hamper into which Katherine can dive and retrieve the precise creature she's seeking. Here's to no new critters for another year! Hallelujah! (And we found Cowie! Good old Cowie!)