My First Crayola Safety Scissors

In preschool, the Pickle does a ton of crafts that involve cutting and pasting.  We do some at home, but I hadn’t been able to find any scissors that I really felt okay with her using even with supervision, so we had mostly focused on painting and other fine-motor skills at home.

A couple of months ago, I was at a store that rhymes with Schmarget, and found Crayola’s “My First Crayola Safety Scissors” – I couldn’t find them on their website, so here’s a link from Amazon:  LINK

The premise of these (and you get a pretty good deal for it, three pair for about $5) is that these scissors should only cut paper and cardstock – not clothes, lampshades, eyelids, or any of the numerous things that small children attempt to cut on a regular basis.  They’re made of plastic, no metal, and they’ve got rounded edges.  Hence, even stabbing motions to, say, a leather couch should theoretically not meet with any destruction.  (I should qualify that nobody in our house has actually attempted this, but I can’t see it being possible.)

Overall, these work awesome.  We did have one accidental mishap where Pickle was trying to cut something while holding it up in the air and accidentally got a tiny bit of hair (so they do cut hair), but overall they’ve been working really well.  I don’t feel like I’m abandoning her to a deathtrap if I have to turn away for five seconds to get her a new piece of construction paper. 

Additionally, they’re really a pretty great price.  For $5, you get three pairs.  This is nice if you’re having a playdate or if you have multiple children.  I figured safety scissors like this would be more expensive than normal scissors, but they’re not at all.  They haven’t broken yet despite some pretty heavy use, so they seem durable.

 

Value:  About $5 for three pair.  This, in my opinion, is a pretty great deal when a single pair of metal children’s scissors usually runs about $3.  10/10.

Child entertainment level:  This was very high for us.  The Pickle loves to cut paper into teeny little pieces more than I can even fathom.  9/10.

Practicality:  In my opinion, this was very practical.  Safe, economic, and worked well.  10/10.

Cartoon Band-Aids

I have a love-hate relationship with cartoon characters on clothes and other items.  I don't really love them, especially on clothes that go out of the house, but they make Pickle SO happy that I will sometimes give up and just allow them.  If I can mitigate the saturation into something specific or small (a pair of snow boots, pajamas, etc.), I feel less like I'm parenting a walking Disney billboard.

I figured one fairly innocuous way to do this was to get character Band-Aids to keep around the house.  Everyone had the same idea with stocking stuffers, so we've got Band-Aids coming out our ears.  Princesses, Tinkerbell, Jake and the Neverland Pirates, Monsters University, Mickey Mouse, and others - they're all living in our house.  I've tried to keep them in one spot in the house, a specific spot where all Band-Aids go that requires Mama or Daddy's help in order to access.  Not that Band-Aids are dangerous or anything, but it just seemed like a good thing to regulate.

We have literally four out of six of these boxes.

This started off great.  Band-Aids only went on valid boo-boos.  Over time, Pickle started embellishing certain injuries a little bit to try and score a sweet Band-Aid, so I'd play along on some of that.  I tried to keep the premise that these were just for when we get hurt, however.

...Until Christmas.  With all of the packages we got for Christmas, some of them got tucked around the house into hiding places.  Suddenly, all of the many, many of the toys that live in our house started getting into horrible accidents.  Luckily, these accidents didn't require stitches or anything - just five to ten Band-Aids for each animal.  This wasn't such a big deal for some of the toys, like dolls with hard faces/hands, or toys wearing clothes.  You just pull the Band-Aid off, and life is good. 

Some of the animals proved a little more problematic, however.  There were several stuffed animals with sort of fuzzy fur.  It wasn't even necessarily long fur, just fur.  Pickle didn't really discern onto what type of surface she was putting a Band-Aid, so we have about 10 stuffed animals with Hello Kitty Band-Aids stuck to them, possibly permanently.  Why, you ask?  It's almost like the Band-Aids decomposed, and so the sticky stuff is incredibly attached to the fur.  It's akin to the texture of rubber cement or sticky tack/gum.  This means that the Band-Aid rips into pieces when you try to remove it, and that you are then stuck trying to use forks, ice cubes, hair spray, and items from various other old wives' tales to try and remove the remaining Band-Aid.  In the end, the only trick that worked was extreme patience.

So, I guess the moral of this story is - Band-Aids are good for the one thing for which they are advertised.  If you have an inquisitive child, keep them locked up with the medicine and knives, or you're going to have a big mess on your hands.

MacGyvered Toys

So, kids like toys.  And toy manufacturers know that kids like toys, so they make them expensive, or sometimes hard to get, or possibly both.  It's a pretty ingenious system on their part - they just advertise during cartoons, whip billions of children into a frenzy over the toy that they are waiting just long enough to release that demand is at a fever pitch, release said toy, and then rake in the millions.  It's diabolical, and I respect it at the same time that I just a tiny bit wish it was acceptable in society to burn down businesses (after making sure nobody was inside to be harmed first, of course). 

At the risk of sounding all "I'm old as heck" or  "la dee dah, I'm pious and pretentious," sometimes I get really annoyed at the toys.  75 years ago, kids were pushing a hoop with a stick for hours, and that was an incredibly viable pastime.  It seems like pretty much everything on the market these days either lights up or makes noise, maybe even has a computer chip in it.  It's not like we refuse to let Pickle play with any of that, I just try to temper it a little bit.  

We also really like encouraging pretend play and a healthy imagination, so we'll sometimes MacGyver toys from junk we have around the house.  Or sometimes we will do this more because we do not want to leave the house or spend extra money, and less to do with ideology.  Basically we just sort of try to tailor a craft or a project to whatever her current interest is.  There is no way that these are Pinterest-worthy ideas that are super-cute, these are just things that will keep a toddler/preschooler busy for a few hours.  

For example, she was pretty obsessed with Little Red Riding Hood for most of the past year and a half.  For last Christmas her grandmother actually made her a gorgeous red velvet cape, but we made her little pink receiving blanket work for a while:

(Little Pink Riding Hood)

She walked around with that on her head for a solid month and a half - but that's only her MacGyvered costume.  She would have J and I take turns being Grandma - since we didn't have a wig or anything, she had us don a pompom she'd received as part of a cheerleading costume as hair, a Dora blanket, and put a poncho she'd received as a gift at our necks like a scarf:

We would then pretend to be sick and really want some cookies and flowers.  And you know what?  That stuff is awesome, because it brought her so much joy.  She had little baskets into which she would put pretend cakes, I bought her a little bouquet of flowers from Wal-Mart, and we had a whole scene to play.  

She was obsessed with lots of fairy tales during this time, such as Jack and the Beanstalk.  (But we would rework all of these fairy tales to not include death and everything/everyone being eaten by something bigger/angrier.)  She really, really wanted to climb a beanstalk.  First we got some glitter glue and painted some big lima beans to be her "magic beans," and then I fashioned her a beanstalk:

This literally could not be easier to make.  You need a pool noodle, some construction paper, some tape, a Sharpie, and some scissors.  Most parents have all of that (other than possibly the pool noodle) hanging around the house.  Make some leaves on the construction paper with the Sharpie, cut them out, tape them on the pool noodle.  (We got extra points for Pickle decorating the leaves with green markers.)  Instant beanstalk!  I have no idea how to ninja together a magical harp, so that's as far as we were able to go with this scenario.  Anyway - we designed this over six months ago, and she still plays with it constantly.  She likes to pretend to climb it by standing on the couch, and it cost a grand total of, like, $1.50.

I mentioned glitter glue previously, right?  That crap is like crack to little kids.  You have nothing around the house but some old socks and some glitter glue?  Instant craft!  Snowed in and just have a paper plate and some glitter glue?  Make a mask!  We had an old, small birdhouse in the garage - it wasn't riddled with lice or anything, it had never been used, I'm not sure why we had it.  We also had some glitter glue and stick-on jewels - this was two days' worth of fun:

It provided even MORE fun later when she picked off each of the adhesive jewels and hid them inside different potted plants around the house.  

One time when we lived in the townhouse, Pickle wanted to go sledding, but we didn't have a yard or anything - so we just took a printer cable and an empty cardboard box and made an indoor sled:  

She had me drag her around in this contraption for an hour.  My arms were cramping up from pulling around 30 lbs of toddler, but she had a BLAST.

I guess the point of this post was mostly just to say that, while I love finding great toys and games for Pickle, some of the things that give her more joy than anything else are just the little things we throw together with what we have on hand.  

American Plastic "My Very Own Nursery"

I know I mentioned it before (such as HERE), but Little A is very maternal and can be very girly.  She loves her babies, has about a million of them.  She loves the little high chair she has for them, as well as her little doll car seat.

So, when we were walking through the Wal-Mart toy department a few weeks ago (also known as "the worst place on Earth), we saw this "My Very Own Nursery" by American Plastic for $19.99 (LINK):

I was a little wary at first of buying this just due to the company name.  "American Plastic" does not sound particularly geared towards children, so I was a tiny bit worried about the safety of it. A quick Google on my phone didn't find any recalls or safety issues, and it didn't look like anything could eat a preschooler finger or anything, so we got it.  

The box said some assembly was required.  What that actually means is, "Yeah, I hope you've blocked off about an hour, because this thing comes in about 40 pieces."  And, true to its name, it was entirely plastic, so there were a bunch of those little plastic connectors that you have to bend back and forth to snap the item free of it.  I was doing pretty well at putting this together by myself, until I got to the parts that required a screwdriver, I needed some help holding the two parts together so I could get the screw in there.  At that point, my husband J came in and said, "OH, that's the same company that made A's vanity.  Yeah, that's gonna suck to put together."  He tagged in at that point and did the bulk of it.  It still took about an hour with me helping, but was better than it would have been if just one of us were doing it ourselves.  You first assemble most of the crib, then comes the sink part, and then the high chair thing off to the right in the photo above.  It comes with a little mobile, a sippy cup, plate and silverware, and some powder.

For the most part, it's fairly sturdy.  Even after taking them off twice and putting them back on, the doors are a little jacked.  They're just not quite even and don't close entirely.  It's not a big issue, and it still works really well.

Little A played with this for approximately three hours straight after we built it, went to sleep, and played with it for four hours straight the next morning.  She loves to put her babies to sleep and then direct us to shush all talking so we didn't wake them up.  Most standard dolls and stuffed animals fit in here, so it works well.  She would use all of the play food from her kitchen to make the baby healthy and delicious treats, would use several of her blankies to keep the baby warm, and actually even used a toy cleaning set she had to clean the sink like Mama cleans the "big" bathroom.  

Overall, I'd say this was definitely worth the $20 we paid.  It's not an heirloom piece or anything they'll be keeping for decades - but considering the price of Legos and Barbies these days, it's a pretty inexpensive toy that will keep an itty bitty mama happy for quite a while.  If a giant dog or something sits on this and breaks it, I wouldn't feel like I'd broken the bank or anything if we had to get a new one or something different.  It is a little larger than some toys, so it may not be the most convenient if you are very cramped for space - I'd estimate wildly that it was about three feet wide, 2.5 feet tall.

Don't forget about our giveaway HERE!

Toy Tea Sets

Little A is sort of a dichotomy.  She really enjoys smooshing whatever she's eating into her face and playing in mud, but she also is a huge fan of more traditionally "girly" pastimes, such as playing with her kitchen, doing some dress-up, playing with babies and dolls, and tea sets.

Oh, the tea sets.  HUGE fan of them.  A dear friend of mine, Nicole, got her this one (Fisher-Price Laugh & Learn Say Please Tea Set) when she turned a year (LINK); it currently runs about $16:

This was a great gift.  She loved the music that the teapot makes, and it was a great hiding spot.  For what, you might ask?  Anything a 13-month-old might not want to eat:

(We really do provide better snacks, she just begged for a Nutrigrain bar that day)

It was the perfect size, and the little cakes are a toddler's dream!  Nothing is choking hazard-sized, the cups are actually a great way to try and get a little one drinking from an open cup if you want to put water in them, and it's fun-colored and cute.  

Once she was a little bit older, she wanted more options for her tea set in addition to this one (believe me, that first set is not out of commission).  My parents found this set for her, the Fisher-Price Magical Tea for Two (LINK), also around $16:

This one doesn't make music like the toddler one, it's designed for older kids.  The "tea" inside of the teapot appears to disappear when you tip it sideways to pour.  My girl is obsessed with this thing.  She will make my husband, J, and I each a cup.  She puts into it:  tea, sugar, milk (she incorporated a cup from her kitchen for that), and "creamy."  You can't forget the creamy.  It also comes with two cute little cookies, which she will put on the saucer.

Then, she hands it to us.  We start to take a pretend sip, and she says we can't, it's too hot.  So we sit there and make idle tea party chit-chat like sophisticated people, and then ask her about five minutes later if we can now drink it.  Nope, still too hot.  We'll repeat that about one more time, at which point it's been at least 10 minutes since the tea was poured, and she'll still say it's too hot.  We usually try to give back the tea or ask for ice cubes at this point, because we just want to drink our freaking pretend tea, so she'll finally allow it.  We, of course, then need some more tea in our empty cups, so this process is repeated.  

If I am drinking Powerade Zero or the G2 no-sugar Gatorade stuff, Miss A also likes to steal some of it and drink it out of these cups.  Because that makes "purple water" fancy.

I think these are great purchases.  They're both durable, don't really have any parts that will break without you taking a hammer or something to it, and it really doesn't make a big mess.  You throw in some funny hats and a princess dress-up dress, and this will entertain a three-year-old for about two hours.  They're also really, really easy to store - we keep these usually on a little wire shelf in her playroom, it takes up about a third of a small shelf.  The tray makes it easy to clean up quickly.  We use these to teach manners and etiquette, so I personally think it's actually a nice jumping-off point for a discussion of that nature.  Not sure how much of that is sticking at 37.5 months old, but at least we're laying the foundation.  I guess we should probably stop giggling whenever she does her "shaky butt" dance when she's naked to really drive that point home, but that's sort of ticky-tack.

Squinkies

If you are like I was about six months ago, you read that title and went "WTH is a Squinkie?"

Squinkies are tiny little toys - I'd say they're a little less than an inch tall, about the length of my fingertip down to my first knuckle (although, I have really small fingers, so this may not be a scientific measurement).  Here's a LINK to the Amazon collection, and a photo:

These come in packs.  I guess some of the packs are rare or coveted or something, because prices for a pack of 12 seem to range anywhere from about $6 to $30.  You can also buy houses, castles, cars, furniture, accessories, etc. for these, all that are just tiny enough to get lost until you step on them at 3 a.m.  Why are you up at 3 a.m.?  Don't sass me.

A friend of mine introduced the idea of these to me as a potty-training bribe.  (Little A is very, very stubborn - she has been able to go on the potty since 21 months, but just has no desire to stop playing long enough to go to the bathroom.  Diapers are easier.  I'm not sure I can even fault that logic, it IS efficient.)  I wasn't really huge into the idea of tiny little toys that she could feasibly choke on, but we needed something more long-term than M&Ms.  She's old enough to know not to put these in her mouth, so we went with it.

Our system:  every successful trip to the bathroom gets a Squinkie.  If she stays dry in her underwear for a week, she gets the Squinkie castle that we had in eyesight.  She did really well at going to the bathroom, so she literally has dozens of Squinkies - every single one represents a bowel or bladder movement, which is a little creepy.  I sort of love telling people that when she shows the Squinkie collection to them, just to see how it goes.

She wasn't all that motivated by the random packs, so we stepped up the game.  Of COURSE they have Disney princess packs.  And of COURSE they are more expensive.  They've actually come down a little recently, but I think a Beauty and the Beast pack was something like $16.  This became a less cost-effective bribery system at this point.  Eventually it worked, however.

They're small, they can be relatively cheap.  The accessories and houses and stuff are actually quite inexpensive, too, so the "big bribe" (if you're using it as such) won't really put you out all that much.

However - these things really are tiny.  They are invariably going to get lost in your couch cushions.  And you're going to step on them, like I mentioned before.  If you have younger children or pets, they may not be great purchases.  There's also not a great system to organize them - I'm a touch OCD, as I've mentioned, so I got sewing boxes with compartments, and we broke up each Disney princess movie into their own compartment.  And then I go a little crazy if Sleeping Beauty is in with Ariel's crap, but regardless.  I saw giant storage tubs of these on Google that were all just mixed together, and I think I need to lie down for a bit.

If we have to potty train another child, I think I might really talk up the M&Ms.  But it worked.

IKEA - CIRKUSTÄLT children's tent

A's godparents are pretty amazing people.  They are always thinking of her and us, even though they just had a new baby of their own.  So, even though we truly didn't request any birthday presents for her 3rd birthday party this summer, they had already gotten her the Cirkustalt children's tent from IKEA (LINK):  

According to IKEA's site, this runs about $19.99 (although, if you get anything shipped any sort of distance through them, it costs an arm and a leg).  

The assembly was insanely easy.  There was a little bit of adjusting, and it was all done.  I think it took me all of 30 seconds in our living room, and then we had to tear it back down and reassemble it down in her play room the next day.

We moved it because this thing is pretty big.  You're going to want to make sure ahead of time that you've got the 3.5 feet diameter free (it's also about 48 inches tall).  We had plenty of room in her playroom, as they knew, so this was an amazing gift - but definitely check that out before purchasing.  Otherwise you may just want to move the crib in here.

...Which is almost exactly what A has done.  She loves her circus tent.  Here is her shortly after it was assembled (please pardon the dollhouse figures on the floor, we'd had visitors earlier that day):

That is a smile of pure, unadulterated joy.  When we got it down into her playroom, she immediately put a ton of stuff in there, her most prized possessions.  Her sleeping bag is in there to use as a backrest, several of her most special stuffed animals (they perform in the circus), and a couple of fake CDs she had on which she pretends to play circus music.  (This mostly means her telling me to do the "doot doot doo doo doo doo doot doot doo doo" song at key moments.)  So, I guess she's sort of the de facto circus barker, because she's super-duper bossy when we're all up in there.

What I like about this best is that it's all of the fun of the circus, without the depression of thinking of abused or neglected animals performing for our amusement.  Win-win!  

Value:  We got this as an amazing gift, but I think it runs around $19.99.  For an enormous circus tent that's really well-made, that's a pretty sweet deal.
Child entertainment level:  10/10.  This thing is a great fort, as well as a circus tent.  We also play house in here, etc., etc.  Great toy!
Practicality:  For us, this is a 10/10.  You'll really want to make sure you have room first, though!

Fisher-Price Dora The Explorer: Playtime Together Dora and Me Dollhouse

We had a conundrum this past Christmas.  Little A really had been infatuated with the dollhouse at our daycare provider/nanny's house.  So, we had to decide what kind we wanted to get.

There were the big ones made by places like KidKraft that were about four feet tall, each of which would accommodate a Barbie standing up.  (We do not currently have any Barbies, mind you, but this was a potential concern.)  We looked at the Fisher Price Loving Family dollhouses.  We looked at bookcases that could double as dollhouses, little tiny toy animal dollhouses, etc., etc.  

There were things I liked and disliked about each of them.  We lived in a tiny townhouse, so the KidKraft ones seemed a little impractically large.  And do you have to, like, secure them to the wall if they're 4 feet tall?  That seems odd for a dollhouse.  The Loving Family ones were nice, but A didn't know anything about them or care much about the families - so, while the price was okay, the expansion packs all ran around $20 on up, which made it add up pretty quickly.  

A and I were at Target walking through the toy aisle, and we found this Dora dollhouse (LINK):

These are currently listed on Amazon for about $50, I found it on super-sale for around $35 or so.  It comes with Dora and her parents, a toy dog, bed, couch, sink, stove, and a little table thing.  This was a pretty sweet deal, and she LOVES Dora with a passion I will never understand, so we went this route.  We purchased the dining room add-on and the master bedroom (each running between $8 and $15 at the time), and my husband's mom got the bathroom and living room, I believe.  We got some of these in the store, but it was fairly picked over, so we went on Amazon for most of them.  

This add-on is for Dora's friends - Boots, Tico, the Iguana thing, and Swiper (because a Dora dollhouse is sort of useless without Boots or Swiper):  LINK.  We were going to get it before Christmas when it was listed at $12, but decided to wait because we'd already gotten all of the other crap.  This must have been the Holy Grail of Dora expansion packs, however - we watched it go two weeks later to $15, another week later to $18, and by the time we were ready to buy it, it was at $25.  We decided to wait until they came down.  I think we instead got a pack that had Diego, the twin babies, and Dora's grandma.  Swiper and the gang came later, once the laws of supply and demand were on our side.

Anyway.  So, even though A roughly knew ahead of time what she was getting, she had mostly forgotten by Christmas.  So, this is how we spent the entirety of Christmas morning:

(She was obsessed with fairy tales at the time, so her grandma made her a red cape.)

This toy has been a staple in our house.  First she was a huge fan of the fact that the doorbell rings.  She just wanted to lie out there and have Dora's daddy or someone from inside of the house open the door.  She'd be waiting outside with a cake or something, depending on the day, and want to be invited in.  Then we had to trade places.  Also, the toilet can make noise, so that was a lot of fun, too.

Later she liked to take the little puppy that comes with the set and play hide-and-seek with him.  He fits inside of a footstool that comes with the living room set, under the beds, under the stove and sink, inside of the bathtub but not the potty, etc., etc.  The puppy is also really good at staying hidden if you accidentally leave him under a toy or book you left out somewhere, too, which results in a pretty hideous meltdown.

We've had this toy for 8 months, and it's a staple in our house.  She goes through phases where she's not as attached to it, but overall it's been a great toy.  It folds up nicely so we can take it both upstairs and downstairs easily, and it's small enough that it fits in a corner.  I feel like it was a good purchase for us, and we can always upgrade to a big dollhouse later.

Value:  $50 (we got it for $35), expansion packs are between $8 and $20.  Pretty good in comparison to other dollhouses out there.
Child entertainment level:  10/10.  Constantly playing with this.
Practicality:  9/10.  Very portable, the pieces are just sort of little.

Disney Princess dolls

I tried to avoid it, since I didn't want to push gender roles on A, but the Disney Princess disease struck our house sometime in the last few months.  What that means is that we dress up like princesses, eat princess macaroni and cheese, play in our princess room, and go poop on the princess potty.  If we can somehow do this with crap officially trademarked and licensed through Disney, that somehow makes it that much more magical.  Freaking preschool.

When we are at the check-out at Target or Wal-Mart or sometimes the grocery store, whatever, occasionally they'll have a single Disney princess doll, sort of like this.  They usually run around $5 or so, so you talk yourself into it because, hey, it's five bucks, right?  Anyway, here's what it roughly looks like:

So, you get it home, and they only give you one other dress (sometimes none), and your 3-year-old (of course) wants to change her out of it - because naked princesses are dainty ladies.  Your child tries to remove this with her cute, pudgy little hands, and she can't.  That dress is made of soft rubber, so I imagine it's like trying to stretch a condom over a housecat.  It took me several moments to get it off and the new one on, so I wasn't exactly in a hurry to buy more of these.  Plus, when the dolls wear these soft rubber dresses, they don't stand up, so it's sort of hard to have a ball when all of the princesses are lying on their backs.  I mean, princesses can have that sort of ball, I just don't want my daughter attending.

So, next time we were at Wal-Mart, I saw this (LINK):

The image really isn't going to do you a ton of good, but those are hard plastic dresses.  They are called "Magiclip."  You pinch the bottom, cram Cinderella/Ariel/Rapunzel/whomever down the neck hole, and ta-da!  She can now stand up so she doesn't look like she's drunk, and your average toddler/preschooler can now swap dresses out on her own.  The dresses themselves can actually stand up on their own, too, which my daughter took to mean that they could be the princes, since you can't actually find any of those:

(All of the princes and princesses were invited to our place after the ball for a pizza party.  Hope they like DiGiornos.)

When you are buying each of these individually, however, you realize that you're spending $5+ on each of these (and they only come with the soft dresses), at least $9 on the dresses that don't suck, etc.  You just spent a small fortune on toys that you are just going to sit on at some point.  I'd probably do a preemptive strike and just buy a set in the first place for cheaper.

Here are the two options that I've seen most online:

- Disney Princess Favorite Moments 4-Pack (LINK) - $21.75 at Amazon
- Disney Princess Magiclip 4-Pack (LINK) - $24.48 at Amazon

Just spend the extra $3 and get the Magiclip 4-Pack for the reasons I mentioned above.  Or just avoid the whole damn thing and try to talk your child into creating Kleenex dresses for her existing toys, because then you can just throw them away when you're done!  (This did not work for us, the reply was, "Mama, that's silly.")

Anyway.  If you're in the throes of this, you have my condolences.  

Value:  Eh.  It's trademarked and all, so it's overpriced for a tiny action figure.  
Child entertainment level:  7/10, depending on their level of creativity and devotion to the whole princess thing.
Practicality:  6/10.  Other than being sort of overpriced, these aren't bad.  You can just throw them in a basket and they don't take up a ton of room, have little pieces, or anything like that.

Play-Doh

What's that you say?  "Why on Earth is she possibly reviewing Play-Doh?  Unless we lived in a cave, we all know what Play-Doh is."

Let me correct you.  You have this idealized version of what Play-Doh was from when you were, like, 7 - and that version is idealized because YOU DIDN'T HAVE TO CLEAN THIS CRAP UP.  Let's review this from the angle of a parent.

So, you buy the Play-Doh.  It's a pretty sweet deal, right?  Fairly cheap, Amazon has four little cans for about $9 (LINK), so that's not terrible.  It's non-toxic, for when your creative little angel decides to devour about a quarter of a can when you turn around for three seconds to grab the phone.

And then there's all of the creative stuff you can make with it!  We had some purple Play-Doh, so A made an octopus (she's being artistic AND practicing counting!).  We had some green Play-Doh, and she made this:

Those would be boogers, in case you can't tell.  It's all class up in our joint.  And you can tell from that smile that she was greatly enjoying those boogers.

As you can tell from the above photo, I was thinking ahead.  I found some ads from the newspaper that I wasn't going to read or use, and spread it out for her to use.  I'm a genius!  

Until I looked at the floor.  It looked something like this on the hardwood:

So, I started with a broom.  That should work right?  HAHAHAHA, no.  All it did was push it around and sort of grind it flat like you do with Silly Putty when you're smashing it on a newspaper to transfer the print.  Hmm, Plan B.  A mop?  Let me tell you now - no.  It gets it wet and muddy.  Don't do that.  Just trust me, don't do it.

The only actual option here is to get on your hands and knees and to pick it all up individually.  Which is pretty sweet when your now-3-year-old loves to take that opportunity to spank your butt.  

It's also near impossible to explain to a toddler/preschooler/whatever why you don't mush the colors together.  It went something like this:

A:  "Can I have the purple to mix with this green?"

Me:  "No, honey.  That ends up looking icky."

A:  "Why?"

Me:  "It's sort of just the color physics of Play-Doh.  It ends up looking like cat barf."

Daddy:  "Trust your mama on this one, honey.  It looks like cat barf."

What happened anyway?  We now have two cans of cat barf sitting on the dining room table.

Value:  Pretty hard to beat, about $2.50 per can for hours of fun.

Child entertainment level:  10/10.  You can make dozens of worms, poop, and boogers.

Practicality:  4/10.  Unless you have a tarp you just lie down wherever your child goes, it's gonna suck to clean up.

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.

Learning Resources Pretend & Play Doctor Set

Last Christmas, my mother wanted ideas on what to get A for her present.  My then-2.5-year-old had a fascination with the doctor that can only come from getting recurrent croup, so I suggested a doctor kit.

Mom scoured the internet, and found the Learning Resources Pretend & Play Doctor Set.  Clicky here:

http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Resources-Pretend-Play-Doctor/dp/B00009XNSY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375055899&sr=8-1&keywords=pretend+and+play+doctor

Here's their visual, although I would indicate that the front of the carrying case looks just a little different:

I cannot begin to tell you how many hours of enjoyment this bad boy has caused.  My husband and I get to lie on the couch and be "sick."  A will put on her name tag and her pager, and will tell us there's an "emergency."  We then will fake-puke into the emesis basin, at which time she declares we're sick.  She then proceeds to use every single item in the kit on us at least once, including using the scissors and tong-things to cut away our clothing so she can do "surg-ry" with the scalpel.  (Some items are slightly misused, as she really likes to give us shots in our mouth.)

Here's a photo of A in action with her kit, sorry for the crappy quality of the photo but it's very hard to catch her in action:

I wish I were that flexible.

This gift was given this past Christmas, and she still plays with it on the regular at the end of July.  I can tell that it's a particularly good toy, because she will share it with absolutely none of her little friends when they come over to play.  So that's nice.

This toy has a very sturdy carrying case, and more little medical items than even I know how to use.  Batteries came installed on the few items that make noise (the pager and cell phone, the latter of which has been integrated into other games and activities), so I didn't have to get out opera glasses and the world's tiniest screwdriver to install anything.  My only complaint about the entire thing is that it took quite a while to open this because it was put together so securely, but that's not actually a complaint.

Value:  Well, it was free to us, so awesome!  It runs about $26 - this is on par with or a little above most other doctor kits available, but it has a lot more items than the average one does.  Pretty even here.

Child entertainment level:  10/10, I'd do higher if that were mathematically possible

Practicality:  10/10.  Very easy to store compactly and efficiently.

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