(I split these up into 3 posts because it did go on so….)
TOYS
I ask you: why haven’t they invented the 3-hour TOY? The one that will keep your child from unwrapping all your sanitary napkins while you’re trying to finish making dinner. Oh, the righteous say, shouldn’t you be there, sitting on the floor, playing lovingly with your child? Enjoying every blessed second of blessedness? Sure. But what about those RARE moments, when I have other things to do and they’ve already watched tv….
We have a ton of the Plastic Pieces of Crap (PPC) that I break immediately as I try to wrestle them out of the packaging. These will amuse for a short time, but as they’re formed from vapid, fluffy concepts (shopping! puppies!) by exhausted overworked humans (sweatshops!) and sold because of their pink sparkly plastic-ness (microchips! phthalates!), I would not expect them to hold up. Still, these are the toys my kids desperately want and swear they will play with. But they lie.
Educational toys? Ah, learning about the world, science, art and self. These toys (often made of wood, featuring primary colors and hedgehogs; invariably from Germany) are supposed engage children’s magical curiosity and sense of wonder. So says the catalog. Alas, they are talking about someone else’s children. My kids will immediately break out into a rash when they touch them. I really want them to play with these things of wonder and science, to learn and be fascinated. But they take no interest in this kind of goodness. I’m sure that if I hadn’t had those extra lattes in the last trimester, my daughter would revel in figuring out how to power our stereo using only a potato, but that’s really all just water under the bridge now.
