Friday Post - Bathtime

 We've gotten a lot of bath toys, we've made a few purchases, and we've tried a lot of different hand-me-downs.  Here is a list of toys and gadgets that worked for us.

 My sister had a proper baby bath, like the one pictured here, and it worked really well for her.  It would have worked with our first baby, but we had a little baby sling and a large oval shaped bin instead.  It worked fine.  We had to use that same big tub for baby number two, because when we borrowed my sister's special little bathtub he started trying to roll himself out of it the minute he had any muscle.  This is the kid who at 8 or 9 months was crawling ON HIS BACK USING HIS HEAD FOR LEVERAGE.

 Somehow we managed to get by bathing the first baby without ever needing a faucet cover.  We got one immediately for baby number two, and good thing too, because he's managed to bash his head against it numerous times.  He's also figured out how to take it apart, because it has a pretty simple design.  That hasn't caused us problems, though.  Yet.

 The bathtub floor stickies were essential for baby number two as well, because he gets excited and decides to run or stomp in the bath.  Even with the stickies he has fallen down at least four times.  But I don't want a full mat because they're so much harder to clean.  (He's pretty much learned his lesson at this point, anyway.)  These can just be shoved to dry in the toy holder.

 We got the kids a rubber duck, of course.  We bought the big one, of course.  I didn't really think about how big 32 centimeters was when we purchased it.  It's huge.  The kids like to pretend to ride this thing. They're both CRAZY about it and talk about it even when it isn't bathtime.  He's their friend.

Now, the rubber duck holds air and has a hole in it, which is a big mistake for a bath toy.  They fill with mildew and become dangerous and impossible to clean.  My husband cut a slit in its mouth so that we can bleach the inside of it and water can pour out of it easily.  It will be the only squeezy toy we get.

 The kids like to pour water.  These Ikea stacking cups are fantastic for that, because they have holes in them, and slits for pouring, and they stack. 

The kids also like to drink bathwater, so sometimes I skip putting these in.

These cups are no longer available.  :(

 This Green Toys Tugboat is our favourite toy for pouring, by far, though.  And we have TWO of them in different colours.  Which means they each get to hold one.  They can't figure out how to drink from it, either.  Green Toys does a whole load of awesome bath toys that are designed to drain properly, pour and float.

 We fill out the tub with a pack of foamy letters and numbers.  We got them when my daughter went through her alphabet obsession.  My son doesn't seem to be that interested, so I don't know that he'll catch on as fast as she did.  Also, we're missing a load of them.  But he likes to stick them to the tub, or the wall, or his sister...

 That's pretty much it for toys.  The kids are satisfied with that, and it's easy to keep track of.  We do have a random bath book, but I use it for diaper changes so that I don't have to worry about their bathroom reader getting poopy.  I'll have to get more for potty time.

We store everything in one of these sliding bath toy trays.  Everything else we looked up was hung from a suction hook.  We had suction hooks on a few things in our bathroom and they were constantly falling down in the middle of the night.  Plus, the toy holders made with netting take forever to dry and are a pain to get into.

I have a drawer right next to the tub that this rack fits in perfectly, so when everything is dry, I just shove it in the drawer.  We are completely satisfied with it.

Friday Post - Candyland

 I win.  I got the 2004 version of Candyland.  And I didn't have to drive to someone's house and pay them a whole $5 for it.  (Seriously craigslisters.  Just because YOU paid $7 for it 10 years ago and then lost half the pieces.  It isn't worth even close to that much.  Not even if you package it with a game I don't want.) I paid no more than $1 for this and there was nothing missing whatsoever.

Why did I want this edition specifically?  Well, the earlier editions are hard to find.  For a start.  And the newer versions just bizarre.

 But as far as game-play goes, Candyland is the only preschool game that uses cards to advance the players along the board.  It means that there's no counting and the game is super easy to play.  Newer versions have a spinner instead, which is so difficult to use.

The art is terrible, and the player pieces are ugly, and boy do I hate this game, overall.  But the reason I hate it is because the first time I ever played it, I was 12.  And really, my daughter loves it for the make-believe aspect.  So I play it with her because it makes her happy.  And when we get tired of trying to make it to the castle, I make my gingerbread man talk to hers and we make up a little story together.

But I'm getting reaaaaally impatient to play strategy games with her.

Friday Post - Fanta Color

 This is a great little Italian peg board with coloured pegs.  It comes with some suggestions for pictures you can make, but the booklet contains pictures made on all different sized boards with different sizes and shapes of pegs...  I guess it's advertising for us to upgrade.

We only have the little portable one, which is enough for us.  The box that stores the pegs snaps onto the frame so that you can carry it around or hang it on the wall to display your picture.  This has been a great alternative to Lite Brite, which is sort of dangerous because you have to plug it in and is wasteful because it requires all that black paper.  Also, lite brite pegs are way too teeny for our household.

Monster puzzle from the grocery store

I'm running or of steam on the Friday posts now that Halloween is coming up...

This puzzle was available at Superstore last year.  It's fantastic because you can mix and match the monsters, but you could also use it to teach colour matching.  It's provided us with hours of entertainment.  Definitely better than a lot of the Melissa and Doug designs.
It is very cheaply made, though.  It wasn't really sanded properly.  I would have easily paid a little more of it had been higher quality.

Friday Post - Number Train

These are pretty standard.  I got it for all of $2 at the thrift store.  This one is Melissa and Doug.  It looks like a square puzzle on the board, but it's just one long train with 20 cars and an engine.

It's been brilliant.  When we first got it, my daughter could count to 12 by rote, and didn't quite understand what she was doing.  She casually worked at it for about two weeks and then, finally, something snapped and she knew how to put it together herself.  Not only that, she loves to sit on the couch with the box and point to each train, counting to 20 out loud.  Shortly after, something else snapped and she was reading double digits all the way to 99.

There's still something missing; she obviously doesn't fully understand how numbers work because she's still a bit confused about the concept of relative differences in size, but this puzzle really helped her visualize what she's doing when she's counting.  I'm so glad we came across it.

Friday Post - Magna Doodle

 I have this thing about not buying my kids toys ever.  Because, why?  They get so many toys.  They play with them for five minutes apiece.  And then they get this attachment to them and I can't throw anything out without being a serious bad guy.  But my house is a mess!

But we also have this dilemma whereby I can't feed, dress or put the baby to sleep without the toddler crying for attention.  I can get by if I put on her favourite show of the moment, or by handing her my phone so that she can play a game.  I'm not adverse to screen time, but I want to limit it.

We bought her a magna doodle to keep her occupied in these situations, and she's in love.  We hid the stamps from her, because they usually end up lost, and I can't afford to have teeny objects hidden in the living room with a crawling baby.  But I do let her use the magnetic letters that we got her.  I've worked on phonics with her a bit this way, and she loves it because she doesn't have to do printing, but she still gets to place the letters herself.

Sometimes we just make patterns and faces, though.  She loves that, too.