Toddler Easter Basket

Kylie's third Easter basket at 2.5 years old included:

• sidewalk paint
• watercolor paint
• two Easter themed stamps I found at Target
• a package of Annie's fruit snacks
• three Reese's peanut butter eggs
• the books Little Lamb and Miss Rumphius
• Eeboo brand puzzle I found at our local bookstore
• Grimm's Wooden Rainbow toy (I think it's just the "small" size, as opposed to the Mini or Large).

Confessions

Forgive me father for I have sinned.

I have been spoiling baby girl with new toys, books, and puzzles a little too much lately. Remember last year when I wrote this post about how as far as toys I was doing pretty good? Well, oh how the mighty have fallen. This year I want EVERYTHING! She plays so good now and is just at the age where it is so much fun to buy her things because she is excited about them, but also isn't bratty about them yet.  Plus, I LOVE playtime, so I get sucked into the new toy trap almost as much as a 5 year old! But in my defense, I go most crazy for the geeky educational type toys. I do feel the need to note here that I think pretty much any toy has some educational value because PLAY=LEARNING. So there is my problem!

She seriously has more self control than me. The other day in JC Penny I needed to find something for $10 to use a coupon I had and I found these two little stuffed animal mice, Jack and Gus from Cinderella, and I was going to buy them to her. Well after she had been holding them for a while and when we went to check out she said "put them back"!  The back story here is that I usually tell her we are going to put the toys back with their friends and say goodbye/see ya next time. So she was actually the one that prevented an impulse buy.

Another way I have been defending myself is because most of my purchases have been from garage sales. So, I feel better about the price and that the toys are second hand and thus better for the environment. But, I'm still probably spending a little too much money and it's so close to her birthday! I'm sabotaging myself because there will be nothing good left for a birthday present.

Gah. So I have confessed my sins and I will try to work on them. Probably best to avoid temptation altogether and just stay home!

What My Baby Girl Wishes Were Toys

A while a go I wrote a post about my favorite toys. Well, ever since I read this splendid little article, I have been putting together in my mind a post about the non-toy items that my daughter has loved to play with as a baby/toddler so that I could always remember them.

The Nalgene bottle was her first obsession. She would love to move the handle back and forth and back and forth and explore the cover with her mouth. She wanted that bottle any time it was out. The second is a set of coasters at my mother-in-law's house. Once she was mobile and could pull her self up on the coffee table she discovered these delightful stacking circles. Her and her Memere would count and stack them. She loved them so much that Memere bought us a set for our house, and now of course she could care less about them! Ha, no I'm just kidding, she does still play with them once in a while and likes to tell us their colors but she isn't as interested as she first once was. Ugh the toilet a paper roll. Okay first of all I DETEST this ugly holder more than anything. When we bought this house (two weeks before baby girl was born I will remind you), I wanted to bring these to the dump as fast as possible, but it just never happened and after the baby came, I gave up on trying to find an alternative toilet paper roll dispenser because I had more important things to worry about, obviously. To this day, my daughter loves to play with the toilet paper roll and the holder. The same thing was in our other bathroom too but that one was really rusty so it did at least make it into our basement and is still awaiting the day I remember to bring it out with the trash. And the kicker is, every single time I bring baby girl downstairs to switch out the laundry she runs over to it and plays with it. Every time.

Now that she is older, baby girl loves to play with things that are small and can be put in and out of containers. She loves to get all the straws out of the box and then put them back in. In and out in and out. She also loves to rip paper off of crayons and stand on books or anything that could be a step (the more dangerous the better in her eyes I think).