Same ol' story ... another generation!

donna723

Well-Known Member
... a grandbaby funny! This really brings back the memories. My grandson, Ethan, will be eleven months old Thursday and is quite the character - or so I hear, from 600 miles away. I was in the florist last week and saw the perfect stuffed Easter bunny, really cute, about 18" high not counting the ears, with an adorable face and the ears have wires in them so they can be bent in any direction. A little expensive but I just had to get it for Ethan's first Easter. I bought one of those very sturdy boxes at the post office, packaged up the Easter bunny, put in a cute little Easter card, a chocolate bunny and a few other goodies, filled up the gaps with Easter grass, and got it in the mail. My daughter emailed me last night that they had received the package. She said he really liked the bunny but he absolutely LOVED the box! He's at the stage where he's pulling himself up on things and that box from the post office is just the right height. He grabs the top of the box and pulls himself up to where he's standing up but sort of leaning on his hands ... and then, from the waist down, he dances! But isn't that just the way it goes! You go to all that trouble to pick out a wonderful toy and then they play with the BOX!

A friend at work has a granddaughter just a week older than Ethan and a little grandson who is three. Between the two of them, they probably have $5,000 worth of toys in that house! And what do they play with the most? Their absolutely favorite 'toy'? An old plastic laundry basket! The little one gets in the laundry basket and then her big brother pulls her all around the house, both of them giggling hysterically! Reminds me of when mine were little. We'd spend hundreds of dollars on toys for birthdays or Christmas and then they'd play with the pots and pans in the bottom cabinet!
 

Hound dog

Nana's are Beautiful
:rofl:

I can laugh cuz my kids were the same way..........and so are my grandkids. If you want to make Darrin's day, give him a cigarette box. I've never figured out what he does with them......but he loves them. Reminds me of my kids and them waiting for their turn to get one of grandpa's cigar boxes. lol Aubrey will turn a simple box into about 500 different playthings and it can entertain her all day.

Did he at least hug the bunny?? lol

easy child picked up Brandon a stuffed bunny. Just a cheap one that was extra soft. He won't put it down for anything. So now she has to pick him up a spare before easter is over and she won't be able to find them.
 

AnnieO

Shooting from the Hip
I was this way too... Imagination did more for me than any toys ever did!

Unfortunately my kids aren't like this (mostly). And many toys now have taken the whole imagination thing out of it.
 

DammitJanet

Well-Known Member
Keyana is not that bad about toys but she doesnt have that many here. She will make believe with various things though. Have no idea what she is like at home.

Hailie? OMG...the child has a ton of toys and barely plays with them. Jamie was complaining that she will play with the exact same toy at someone elses house like it is the worlds best toy but ignore it at their house. I told him to go and pack up 3/4 of the toys they have and rotate them out. It will be like they are new all over again. They certainly didnt grow up with a million toys.
 

trinityroyal

Well-Known Member
My children are the same way as well. Little easy child will have hours of fun with a cardboard box, making forts, homes for his creatures, garages for his cars, etc. Tot Monster P likes nothing better than a rough-textured wash cloth and Tot Monster B chooses my house keys over any of the toys in their toy box.

I was just the same.

Trinity
 

DammitJanet

Well-Known Member
Oh dear...wonder what this says about Keyana...her favorite toy in the world now is my cell phone because she can watch videos on it...lol.

As a baby she loved sitting in her bouncy chair and watching race cars on the tv.

Hmmm...I see a theme.
 

AnnieO

Shooting from the Hip
Janet, did you let Keyana vote on the CD NASCAR?

LOL. Just don't let her dial 911 on the cell.
 

DammitJanet

Well-Known Member
LOL...she doesnt dial. My phone is a touch screen and it has TV on it. She is completely thrilled with the fact that the Disney Channel is there and she can watch her Hannah Montana on Grandma's phone. I was a bit reluctant at first to let her touch it but she is so careful with it. She carries it like it is glass...lol. Two hands, cradled every so gently while she is sitting down with a pillow on her lap so it cant "get hurt!" She is definitely getting a Mp3/Mp4 player for Xmas this year.
 

KTMom91

Well-Known Member
I can hardly wait till Maddie is old enough for things like this...though I did get her an Easter basket, with a pacifier, a rattle, and a small pink stuffed bunny. Her mama says she's fascinated by the ears.

Next year...next year...
 

DDD

Well-Known Member
Boxes have always been big with the kids, grandkids and their neighborhood friends. One adavantage in our favor as we always have boxes to bring home from the store, lol.

Janet, good advice about swapping out toys. It works well for kids....AND for dogs. Ace has a toy basket and
ignores the ones on the bottom. I take a few and hide them away for days when he is restless. Of course he
is almost always restless......so.....there's alot of swapping out! DDD
 

skeeter

New Member
boxes, tape and rope. My kids loved them - I often wondered why I bothered buying toys.

Oh and dirt. We still tell about the time when our next door neighbor got a load of top soil and my oldest, who wasn't 2 at the time said "Oh mom, look - C bought me dirt!" He grabbed all his Tonka trucks and got mad at C when she actually tried to put the topsoil around her garden.
 

donna723

Well-Known Member
When my daughter was three, I got her this set of giant 'blocks' for Christmas. They were corregated cardboard boxes, came from the Sears toy catalog, and I think I paid about $5 for them. They came flat and I had to put them together. They were the color of bricks and about the size of a shoe box when put together. There were a BUNCH of them and they took up half a closet when we put them away. They were her all time favorite toy and she played with those silly things literally for years! She built walls and houses and roads for her toy cars, anything she could think of. Then when her brother came along, he played with them too till they fell apart! Best 5 bucks I ever spent! I doubt if they even make them any more. They didn't play music, there was nothing to plug in, no batteries, no computer chips - they ran strictly on 'imagination' and they were WONDERFUL!

It's kind of upsetting that there aren't many toys like that now. My grandson hardly has any toys that don't light up or sing to him or talk to him or play music. There's no place for 'imagination' any more and that's kind of sad. Now the kid just pushes a button and sits back and watches the toy do it's thing!
 

trinityroyal

Well-Known Member
They didn't play music, there was nothing to plug in, no batteries, no computer chips - they ran strictly on 'imagination' and they were WONDERFUL!

One of Little easy child's favourite toys (aside from cardboard boxes of course) is a set of wooden blocks painted in primary colours. There are several different basic shapes, and he builds all sorts of things with them all the time. The other day he was building a house and needed bedding for the bedrooms. We worked together to figure out what would make the best bedding and then made a bunch of pillows and blankets out of folded bits of paper towel. Those bed linens now live in the box with the blocks, and he uses them all the time.

I really think children lose out on so much when all the discovery of playing is done for them. Even Lego has changed from the way it was when I was a child. It used to be that you got a box of assorted lego bricks and figured out what you wanted to make from them. Now, lego comes in kits with diagrams and detailed instructions. You can build a plane or a Star Wars tri-fighter or whatever, but it's much harder to just make it up as you go along.
 

DammitJanet

Well-Known Member
Donna....they still make them! I bought a set of those for Keyana's oldest brother the year she was born. He would have just turned three. Cory had the lovely job of putting them all together...lol. Then we packed them all into a bunch of huge boxes and wrapped them up and took them to his house!

They sell them in the Lillian Vernon catelog. www.lillianvernon.com

All kinds of neat stuff there.
 
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