Step2 LifeStyle Custom Kitchen

When our daughter A turned one, she decided to celebrate her birthday (or shortly thereafter) by breaking her arm.  Hooray, right?  Here's the proof:

Censored to protect the innocent

We had some supplemental accident insurance that rhymes with Schnaflac, and they sent us a check.  Since neither my husband nor I had broken our arms, it only seemed fair to spend the money on A.  She was already huge into pretend play, and loved the pretend kitchen at our nanny/daycare provider's house, so we got a similar one.  We went with the Step2 LifeStyle Custom Kitchen (LINK).  Here's the photo from Step2:

That's pretty accurate to how it looks set up.  Most of it comes assembled, except that the stickers were not on there.  My husband applied these when my daughter and I were not home, which is probably good as I am certain he said a bunch of words she shouldn't have heard.  Maybe some I shouldn't hear.  

Once the stickers were on, though, it was awesome.  We've had it for almost two years now.  This is how much A liked it the first day we got it:

Yeah, I earned this.

And she loves it as much today.  She mostly hid things in the baskets and put pans in the oven and on top when she was little, but at 3 she now has entire tea parties and pot holders and everything she makes is "too hot" and we can never ever eat it.  She adores it, and getting extra dishes and stuff was a great decision.  I'm a huge fan of pretend play, and it makes me happy to see that this toy encourages that so much.

The quality is very good - durable hard plastic, but no sharp edges to hurt little hands.  The little pan and pot that come with it make noise when put on the "burner," and ours hasn't had the battery wear out yet.  The little phone that came with this one has gotten even more mileage than the kitchen itself, it fits right in her hoodie pockets.  The little plates, bowls, and cups that came with the kitchen fit perfectly in the little drying rack and the pretend sink, etc., and they've been used to hold many a snack at our house.  I liked the way this was constructed in comparison with some of the other brands - the wood ones are very cute, but this is so easy to clean and durable.

Value:  $120.  Toy kitchens aren't cheap, yo, but they are a long-term toy.  If I had to figure some dollar-to-hours played ratio, I'm guessing it would be a lot less than many of our cheaper toys.

Child entertainment level:  10/10.  This is the toy that is the old standby in our house.

Practicality:  9/10.  This is pretty small.  Probably 2.5 feet across or so, and less than a foot deep.  (This is off of eyeballing, not off of anything official.)  It's easy to tuck into a corner, and easy to wipe down.

Step 2 Safari Splash Water table

Before we begin, let me preface by saying I could not be a bigger fan of Step 2 products.  This is not to butt-kiss any Step 2 CEOs who may happen to stumble upon this blog while googling themselves or anything, it's true.  We have a Step 2 kitchen that is awesomesauce, and a bunch of other Step 2 stuff.

With that in mind, when we recently moved to our new house (that included the yard and patio area that our townhouse never did), we went out and purchased this almost immediately:

http://www.target.com/p/step-2-safari-splash-water-table/-/A-13354061#prodSlot=medium_1_6&term=water+table

In case clicking links isn't your thing, here's a photo of it:

Anyway. so this was our almost-3-year-old for about the first two weeks we had it, she was elated and wouldn't step away from it:

This was particularly awesome while we were painting and she wanted to "help."  

After a few nights, however, I came out to find that the water looked something like this very loose, Microsoft Paint-created approximation.  The yellowish-brown is not to reflect the color of the pool itself, that's the scummy color the water had taken on:

The small black flecks are random crap that apparently grew or landed in there.  The big black flecks are the flies that all committed suicide collectively into this water table.  It was frigging nasty.

So, I did what any normal human would do - I bleached the shit out of it.  It took maybe eight bleach wipes to get that thing less than gross.  I thought maybe the fact that we'd had it at the edge of the patio near the open air meant that more stuff might fall into it and make it gross, so I refilled it and put it near the house totally under our canopy to lessen that.

Three nights later, it looked back like this:

What I didn't picture here, as it seemed a touch grisly, is that the adorable plastic animals that came with it had now developed something that looked akin to leprosy on them, so I also had to bleach them for quite a while.

We've debated bringing it inside our three-season porch, but I assume it will still get some sort of film, so then we've got the new problem of getting it back outside without spilling the water all over to clean it.   I don't really know if there's anything we could put in the water to keep it from getting filmy and nasty.

So, through no fault of Step 2, this was a wildly impractical purchase (beings as I have a full-time career and want to spend my time at home with my family, rather than obsessively de-grossing a water table).

Overall, my reviews would be:

Value - Good price overall, about $50 normally, got on sale for $30

Child entertainment level - 8/10

Practicality - 1/10