The One With Older Baby Toys

Ok guys, in 6 days my babies will turn one. This is not acceptable. I'm really in denial. I thought I would do a post on some new toys that we have gotten for the girls as they get older. (9 months plus)

I'll have you know that I have stuck to my "toy guidelines" from a previous post, and that my girls still love their old toys as well! Hooray! I'm trying to get universal, gender-neutral classics that will last a long time. If you missed that post, it's here.  Here's hoping that these will get many more years of use!


Fisher Price Animal Sounds Farm

(pic courtesy of amazon.com)

My girls LOVE this farm. They can play with it together for like, 30 minutes at a time. At first, they just gnawed on the animals, but now they try to place the animals in the farm. They also love to drop the animals down the chute of the silo, then open the door and discover them at the bottom. The rooster slides horizontally and sings Old MacDonald (without lyrics, just music, so it's less annoying) and the girls bounce on their butts and dance along to the music.
Perks:
-It comes with 6 figurines (5 animals, one farmer, there is also a goat that isn't pictured above) that are wonderfully sized for a baby grip, yet are safe for munching.
-It makes animal sounds when you open the doors on the front. (It oinks when you open the pig pen, etc).
-It has a silo attached that holds all the pieces!! (Self-contained pieces? I'm sold.)
-It has batteries, but you can turn the sound off if you'd like.
-My friend has a 3 year old that still loves this toy! (We will get a few years out of this one!)

 (Emily putting the sheep in the barn loft, Charlotte examining the farmer.)

Leapfrog Fridge Farm
I guess I'm obsessed with farms? I didn't realize this until now. I really like this one. First of all, my kids are obsessed with the fridge and kitchen, so anything that keeps them occupied without mischief is a winner in my book. Leapfrog also makes a fridge phonics toy that tells you the letter sounds. I'm all about this as a teacher, but a) The girls aren't quite ready to grasp phonics yet, and b) I didn't want 26 little magnet pieces all over my kitchen floor. The girls love this toy.

 (All the animal options)

(See! Already pieces on the floor! So glad there aren't 26 letters.)

Perks:

-You can turn the sound on/off.
-Because the pieces are magnetic, the base kind of "sucks" them in more easily. The girls can actually put the pieces in the base with success!
-Sometimes my girls fight over the cool base, so I just let them play with the magnets on cookie sheets without the base. They still have fun attempting to match the animal head and butt.
-When you make a match, the toy sings, "You made a match! Look what you found! You made a match, hear a cow sound! Moo!" (or sheep or pig, etc) It also has fun facts about each animal, like "Did you know that pigs roll in the mud to stay cool?"
-If you don't make a match, the base sings, "You put a pig in the front, you put a horse behind, put them together, and what do you find? A pig-horse! That's silly!" I like that it still rewards them for placing the pieces in, yet gives feedback that they didn't make a real animal, just a silly one. I'm sure this will crack the girls up when they're 2-3 years old.



Little Tikes Activity Garden
Stop what you're doing and get this toy. It's amazing. Life-altering. Ok, maybe I'm being dramatic. This has been one of my favorite toys of all time. The kids I nannied had this toy. They had it in the baby room at Pine Cove. (Shout out to all my Creek Kids girls!)
It is everyone's favorite toy, and very highly coveted. The worst part? They don't make it anymore. The best part? I got it on Craigslist. If you get it on Craigslist, just make sure that it comes with all the pieces (3 pieces of mail, 3 vegetables). Or you can get replacement pieces on Ebay. When we bought ours, it was covered in crayon. Mr. Clean Magic eraser took it all off!

 Emily walks around the perimeter of the house.

Charlotte planting a carrot.

 They LOVE to play peek-a-boo through the mailbox! 

Super fun!

Perks:
-This can be an indoor/outdoor toy. It's made by Little Tikes, so it is durable enough for outside, yet cute enough for inside.
-Both babies can fit inside well.
-Cool features: It has a swinging door, a tunnel to crawl out of, a squeaky doorbell, a squeaky bird, spinning birds, floppy flowers to play with, a carrot, radish and onion that they can "plant" in the garden portion, and a mailbox with mail inside! The mailbox is BY FAR the highlight of the toy. It even has a little flag you can put up like a real mailbox.
-Even big kids that are 3-4 still love playing with this.

Melissa and Doug Jumbo Knob Puzzles
First of all, you cannot go wrong with anything Melissa and Doug. Ever. They just have the best stuff. I want to start working on the girls' fine motor skills, so puzzles are the way to go! I love their jumbo knob puzzles because they are easy for the babies to grasp the pieces.

-My sister got them this puzzle with the shapes and it is their favorite! I like the fact that you can put the shape in successfully, even if it is technically upside down. (The shapes are symmetrical.) The girls have already put pieces in correctly! Yay!

Instruments (any that are age appropriate)
Weee! We love instruments! (Me and my hubby were diehard band nerds! Drum major and drum captain? Nerdy musical destiny.) The girls love to make music. We have a musical tub that I get out once a day. It's full of loud and annoying (I mean fun?) toys that can help teach rhythm and give them a variety of auditory input. We shake our toys and sing our ABC's, jingle bells, or whatever cutesy song I can think of.  We usually play with this in the morning time and it magically gets cleaned up by the time daddy gets home from work. It helps the sanity over here.  I really want to get them a xylophone, but the thought of my 2 babies and mallets scares me. They are always somehow injuring each other. Plus, we have a bathtub xylophone and they would just gag themselves of on the mallets. Maybe when they are older?

(Sensory water bottles, jingle bells, maracas*, tambourine, rain stick, baby piano)

*Don't get cheap plastic maracas. If the plastic is thin, and your child hits it against something, it will shatter and you will have lots of tiny bead things everywhere. Mine are plastic, but it is very thick. (Lakeshore, $2.99)


FREE household things my girls love to play with:
-Blankets and pillows
-Tupperware
-Board Books (sometimes I sneak board books into their cribs once they are asleep. That way, when they wake up, there are fun books to look at in the morning!)
-Plastic Mixing Bowls
-An air mattress
-Diaper/Wipes Boxes (they love to climb on/push these around)
-Laundry in a laundry basket (emptying and filling over and over)

Ok, so there's my list of new fun toys. If you're not a mom, you probably just died of boredom. :)
Bye guys! Next post...birthday party post!!!

The One With Sensory Water Bottles

So in a moment of desperation the other day I just let the babies with my half-empty (I mean half-full) water bottle. Favorite. Toy. Ever. I love that kids love cheap random stuff that isn't meant to be a toy. They loved to slosh it around and crinkle it and gnaw on it all over. So I decided to fill other water bottles full of random household crap and give it a fancy name, "Sensory Water Bottles".  Works for me!

Here's what you need:
1. Empty water bottles (any size, even 2 liter bottles would work!)
2. Hot glue
3. Random household crap (not literally)
4. Electrical Tape
5. Food Coloring

The hardest part of this project was waiting. I'm the kind of person that once I get the "craft bug" I must create RIGHT THEN. If I'm feeling creative I will paint or re-arrange a room at midnight. But sadly, I needed to wait until my water bottles were COMPLETELY dry.  This took over 24 hours. Boo. I even tried to speed up the process with a hair dryer on the cool setting. Nope. If you don't wait until they are completely dry, would will have a cloudy and possibly moldy bottle.

Once the bottles were dry, I filled them up! I used:
-red food coloring in water
-green food coloring in water
-uncooked spaghetti noodles
-some random jingle bells I found
-colorful fuzzy pom pom balls
-uncooked beans

I tightened the bottles as tight as I could, then hot glued them to seal them closed.  Then I got paranoid and used electrical tape to super seal the lid on.  I'm still paranoid of them somehow choking on a bean or jingle bell, but I'll watch them. I really don't think that they can open them at this age. *

*please don't sue me if you make these and your Houdini baby somehow opens these up unsupervised

My babies LOVE these.  

Here are some fun aspects about sensory water bottles:
-They make all sorts of different noises (sensory input)
-They are different weights (the bean bottle is not full and heavy, yet the pom pom bottle is full and very light)
-They are super sealed and can float in the bathtub
-The girls love looking at the world through the colored water
-They can fit in the cup holders of their carseats/stroller for entertainment
-They were basically free to make

Hope you guys make some! They are fun! :)


***Also: You can also do this with 2 liters for older kids. Fill it up with mostly rice and add extra random things inside and ask them to find them. "Can you find the yellow button? Or the silver screw?" etc It's like a fun treasure hunt!

The One with Our Favorite Books

We are trying our hardest to read to the girls as much as we can. Here are our favorites for the girls at this age:

I have only introduced board books to the girls so far because they gnaw on everything. Also, they love try to turn the pages themselves and I'd prefer no ripped pages!  In this phase of life, we are reading books that have a fun rhythmic cadence that the girls can recognize when they hear it. When I read them narrative story books (like the Very Hungry Caterpillar) they like the pictures, but soon become disinterested.  I still read them those kinds of books for variety, but they like a sort of sing-song pattern to stay involved.

Brown Bear, Brown Bear: (Bill Martin, Jr and Eric Carle) The girls love this one. I would always recite it to them while changing diapers, etc so that they would be distracted. Charlotte first smiled when I read this to her. When kids are older, they can memorize this one. Its predictability makes them feel like they are "reading", which is adorable.

Barnyard Dance: (Sandra Boynton) All of Boynton's books are awesome! The girls love the rhythm and cadence of this one. It is fun and upbeat and just adorable.

Hand, Hand Fingers Thumb: (Al Perkins) Ok, I am not a fan of monkeys. They might eat your face at any minute. But this book (all about monkeys) has an adorable upbeat pattern to it. I'd recommend it!

In My Nest:  This book has an adorable finger puppet bird in the back. It pops through all the pages and the girls LOVE to grab its little wiggly body. There are many books in this series they are all ADORABLE. We have "On My Leaf" (with a ladybug finger puppet) and "In My Pond" (with a fish finger puppet).  Sadly, the books is a little short, (like, 4 pages) but worth the fun with finger puppet.

The Foot Book, Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You? and Blue Hat Green Hat:   More awesome books by Dr. Seuss and Sandra Boynton. The girls love them all.


The Jesus Storybook Bible: I can't say enough about this Bible. My hubby would always read it to my belly when I was pregnant. He still reads it to them every night before bed. Precious. Every story relates back to Christ. The illustrations are whimsical and beautiful, and the people are actually Middle Eastern looking! :) It breaks down the stories in an easy-to-understand way. The girls can't understand it now, but we want to instill reading the Bible into their everyday life. Even I enjoy and learn from the stories!

What are your family favorites?

The One with Toys We Like

I thought I'd do a post on all of our favorite toys! It was hard to choose, but I narrowed it down.

When I look at toys, I try to follow these guidelines:
1. Will it drive me crazy?
(no elaboration needed)
2. Is it gender neutral?
I want future kids to be able to use it as well. Plus, I'm not very girly.
3. Does it require batteries?
If so, does the cool factor negate the battery factor? When it is running low on batteries, will it sound like a cat dying?
4. Is there educational value to the toy?
Anything from fine/gross motor to phonemic/alphabet skills or imaginary play all has value to me.
5. Does it serve more than one purpose?
Could this cup be used in the bathtub/sandbox/pretend kitchen later? Or is this singing frog a "one trick pony" ?
6. Will they use it for throughout their young childhood?
Other than teething toys, I'd like for them to be able to use their toys in other forms throughout being a toddler, etc.
7. Can they choke?
Sometimes things look big and deceptively non-chokey, but when gnawed on can break off into smaller chokey pieces.

from left to right
1. Bead Roller Coaster (Ikea, $9)
The girls love this! It's a mini version of the ones at the doctors office! They both can play with it at the same time. They can use it laying down or sitting up. I know they will like it when they are older as well.

2. Stacking Cups (Lakeshore)
I used to work at Lakeshore, so I'm kind of obsessed with their stuff. These stacking cups are awesome, and the girls LOVE them. They can't stack them now, but they love to gnaw on them, knock them over, and clank them together. They soon will learn fine motor and critical thinking skills as they are able to stack them appropriately. Plus, some of the cups have geometric shapes on the end that later can be used as play-dough stamps, etc. They are also dishwasher safe.

3. Soft and Safe Building Blocks (Lakeshore)
Again, obsessed. These blocks are colorful, have shapes on them, and are awesome! They are soft and squishy and totally munchable. They can't get hurt as they wildly hit themselves in the face with these. They are quiet and coated with vinyl so you can easily wipe them off with a Clorox wipe or something. I can see the girls loving these until kindergarten!

4. Washable Sensory Balls (Lakeshore)
Oops. More Lakeshore stuff. When I worked there, I could sell everything!
Ok, these are great because they are machine washable, come in 6 different sizes, and have all sorts of different textures. Some are jingly, some are crunchy, some are smooth, some are corduroy. The girls love to nudge and roll these around the living room. Balls and rolling toys help promote crawling and forward movement. They are also fun to gnaw on. I'm glad they are able to enjoy them now, but I know they will think of all sorts of fun ways to play with them later. They are also soft and quiet, so I know they won't be breaking anything with these later on!

5. Skwish Toy (Manhattan Toy)
I can't say enough about this one. Our favorite teething toy. It's wooden with beads, but has stretchy cables between all the joints. The girls liked this toy early on. Because of the many stretchy cables and its "atom-like" structure, the girls were very easily able to grasp and manipulate it. When they were on their tummies, they could gnaw on the different corners. I wasn't afraid of it choking them because with any pressure on it, the toy collapses flat. The beads quietly rattle as you shake it around. They still love it today.

6. Learn and Groove Musical Table (Leapfrog)
I have loved this toy for years. Everyone I nannied for had it. They had it at Pine Cove, and in the church nurseries I volunteered in. It's just the best. Worth the batteries. In the picture it is flat (on the far right), but there are detachable legs to make it a table later. The girls LOVE it. If we were trapped on a desert island for the next 2 years and only had 1 toy, it'd be this one. It has 2 modes: learning and musical. It teaches you everything from instrument sounds (I'm a band nerd) to the alphabet and opposites. It also has a Spanish setting (ole!). Both girls can easily play with this at the same time. I love that when it sings the alphabet it clearly separates "L M N O P" rather than ellemeno P. I don't know how many of my first graders thought "ellemeno" was a letter. I could go on and on. Just get this one.

This is what my living room looked like after the girls destroyed it. Yay! :) They had a fun afternoon.
What toys are your favorites?