Spielzeug

Joey started his campaign to visit the “train store” earlier than usual this morning: he came out of his room, tousled-headed and bleary-eyed, muttering about trains.  But it was his lucky day, because I had another shopping request, a birthday gift for Alex from his great grandma, so the toy store was on my list of morning chores.

I’ve been thinking a lot about toys lately.  We have an awful lot of them in Seattle. It’s a real fault of mine: I love a thrift-store bargain, and you wouldn’t believe what I find discarded in Kirkland.  It would be interesting study, looking at how the discarded toys of a given community reflect its wealth.

But it’s incredible, how many beautiful wooden toys and high-quality board games that I find at ValuVillage. And I buy them as much for myself as for the kids. I get a real kick out of getting down on the floor with them and watching them learn how a new toy works or figure out the strategy for a new board game. It’s an excellent perk of having kids: I get to stay home all day and play with their toys.

And when a new toy only costs a dollar, I figure, why not?

Well, there are many good reasons why not.  I know this! I do! If my kids are limited to a small number of toys, that’s when their real creativity surfaces, as they figure out new ways to play with the toys, or create involved stories for them, or change the rules of a board game to make it more interesting.

I know it's true from my own childhood. Some of my favorite memories are of the long road trip vacations we took and all of the fun we had in the back of the station wagon or van with our little backpacks of treasures. And, similarly, I see it with my own kids when we go on vacation, and revel in it.  The little souvenir toy they get from the theme park becomes the center of their imaginary life for the rest of the trip. It's wonderful.

And I’m seeing it now.  A couple of times during the first week after our things arrived, Alex grumbled about not having anything to play with, but it’s been a long time since I heard that.  Each kid has one thing that they keep returning to daily: Joey, his matchbox cars; Alex, his beloved shrinky-dinks; and Ella, her ever-exploding board game that she’s been making.

(She’s been playing her game off and on with Alex, but she admitted it’s so much more fun to invent and build the game than it is to play it.  Sometimes I feel like I can see her future stretched out before her so clearly.  I’m only unclear as to whether she’ll choose Rice, Harvey Mudd, or MIT.)

And they’re being so innovative: they don’t have a connect-four board, so yesterday they drew one on a whiteboard tablet and played the game that way.  I think that’s kind of awesome.

Today I decided to experiment a little with Joey.  Just as I was getting ready to leave the house to go to the store, I noticed he was distracted with two little dinosaurs that Ella got in one of her chocolate eggs (pictured above). So I decided to see how long he would play with them.  So the dinos stomped on each other and slid down Joey’s arm and ate each other’s toast...

For 42 minutes. At which point Joey remembered himself: “Hey! But...Train store!”

Joey is only awake for about 12 hours each day...that was a huge fraction of his Thursday, given to playing with two little toys.  And as soon as we got back from the store, he ran right back to them and got Alex to play dinos with him for session number 2.

(Warning: I have to advise against letting your kids get attached to toys that are miniscule and are only replaceable by buying and cracking open dozens of chocolate eggs.  Orange dino went missing, and we spent another long fraction of Joey’s day in a tearful search. Bummer.)

I have to say, it’s a good think the kids are easily entertained. I was pricing toys today, and I have such sticker shock, with everything costing at least twice as much. Funnily enough, there are a few things, wonderful things, that are so much cheaper here.  From me, Alex is getting a little wooden music box for his birthday.  And Ella, she’s been saving up to give him chocolate eggs.

Oh, and speaking of Ella, I have an invitation for everyone:

Her stage debut!  Let me know soon if you’d like to attend...I think I have to turn in our head count on Monday. She’s graduated from girl-playing-silently-in-the-corner to girl-with-two-lines.