Sunday, January 30, 2005

Noisy toys - another perspective

There is a great blog about noisy toys at 4boydad.blogspot.com. It is great for several reasons. First it is well-written and worth reading, I don't care who you are. Secondly it is about some of my grandchildren. (The reason grandchildren and grandparents get along so well is that they have a common enemy). Thirdly, but not leastly, it is written by my son.

The whole time my son and daughter were growing up, I kept telling them "some day you will have children of your own and I will be able to get my revenge."

Time out for an unsolicited testimonial - Vtech makes great toys. They can package noise making mechanisms in the greatest variety of containers I have ever seen.

Back to our regular programming -

This revenge comes through being able to tell your grandchildren - "don't worry about that wet towel, someone will pick it up later."

Another favorite line is "...just leave those toys on the floor, someone will get them later."

I also like "if you are still hungry after not eating your vegetables, we have some new cookies".

And yes, we do have the Elmo guitar - in fact S2 and I were playing with it just last weekend.

J was playing with Legos - they are still on the floor of the playroom, while T and S1 were using unnecessarily large amounts of paper and printer ink.

We also have several other noisy toys that I play with when the little ones (S2 and A ((more about him in other blogs))come to visit) - sorry about the parenthesis thing - I used to be a programmer.
Sometimes I even play with them when there are no children here.

Just lately my son and his lovely wife sent more toys to us - a "sack-race Grover and Cookie Monster". They not only make noise - they hop - they talk while they hop - they make other noises while they talk while they hop. Not only that - but they need adult interference to make them work for a one-year-old. I knew how to do that because I had been playing with them in anticipation of someone visiting who would want my assistance.

Strangely enough - my daughter has started sending things home to store in the attic. This is great because they will be moving soon and we are glad to help. It has just dawned on me that most of the things she sends home make noise. That's ok - because soon they will live close and we can take our stash to their house when we go visit. We may forget to bring a few of them home.

All-in-all, I enjoyed and continue to enjoy our children. God gave us good children. But, I do have to tell you that being able to interact with our small ones is great for two reasons - we do not have the immense moral responsibility that we did when raising our children and there are so many ways of getting even - do you realize how much fun boys have in the tub with just a little bubble bath going through the jets? Especially, when you say "be sure to try this at home"

Friday, January 07, 2005

Here we are......

.... when I think of something more important to say....I'll be back