What Exactly Does That Toy Do?

I decided when I was pregnant that my son was going to play with educational kids toys. There are quite a few useless toys on the market in my opinion. Who really needs a doll that comes with a dog that needs to be “housebroken” or creatures that make foul noises? I think it is disgusting. I think it is important to use toys as a teaching tool, especially when your child is young. I believe that your child can learn a lot with playing with toys. Noah has a huge imagination. He is always coming up with new ideas to do with his toys. He has blocks that he loves to play with and he makes patterns with them, complex ones. He will turn just about anything in to a crane or some other kind of transportation, yes he calls it transportation. He loves to build things or “do construction” as he calls it, and that helps with his gross motor skills.

There are what I classify as good toys and bad toys. Good toys are educational and have a purpose and are fun. Bad toys are those that are crude or violent. I know it is not really an issue at Noah’s age now but as he gets to be older he might want some toys I find unacceptable. I have already decided there will be no toy guns in my home. My neighbors have BB guns and it drives me up the wall because I am afraid Noah will pick up the BB’s the kids shoot and try and eat it. I also don’t like that they seem to aim at live animals on our pond. I don’t want Noah to think that guns are cool. They also look a lot like real guns and that is how tragedies happen.

Can I get a Price Check?

I get very excited when I find items I use a lot are on sale. You really have to check and make sure it is in fact a deal. One of my local grocery stores often has a sale buy 10 for 10 and get one free. You can mix and match so it is usually a good deal. One day I was shopping for baby food and I saw in the flier that it was 10 for 10 and get the 11th free. Great, awesome right? Yeah I thought so, until I realized that the item only cost 88 cents to begin with! So, I was thinking they want me to pay an extra 12 cents? I don’t think so. We pointed out the mistake to an employee and they kind of thought I was dumb for pointing it out. I thought it was kind of deceitful to act like it was a better deal when it wasn’t. I often wonder how many times we think something is on sale because the sign covering the price says so.

I always have a million things going on while I am at the grocery store. I don’t check every sale price with the original price every time. I have started to remember to do so. I hope you will remember to make a point to check out prices when you shop and make sure just because it sounds like a good deal that it really is.

Let's go camping

One of the things I am looking forward to doing with Noah is going camping when he gets a little bit older. I used to love going to summer camp. Going to camp was one of my favorite things to do during the summer. I made so many friends and I didn’t want to go home. I really enjoyed receiving letters from my family. It is just something about being outside in the wilderness and sitting around a campfire that does a body good. You can have so much fun just sitting around a fire telling stories, singing songs, and of course making S’mores. I also like to fish. I really think that Noah would get a kick out of it and really enjoy camping. We have talked about looking at camping tents and sleeping outdoors in our backyard. We were discussing that the other day. I am not too sure if it would be something that would last all night and if I would get any sleep.

I used to camp out in my back yard with friends or my sister and most of the time we would end up coming inside once it got late. We would hear a noise and get scared. I have always lived in really nice areas but I am kind of a chicken even now. I think a better idea would be to instead of camping out, spend a few hours outside in our tent and doing everything that you would do when you are camping but then come inside after we did all the fun things. I think that would be the best bet until he gets to be older then we can do the full blown out in the woods experience. Do you like to camp with your family? Please share with me some of your stories.