Cindy Lou Who doll - Manhattan Toy GIVEAWAY

Christmas is rapidly approaching (hooray!).  We wanted a way to get Pickle into the spirit, but still to incorporate things she already loves.  Since she’s a huge Dr. Seuss fan (the girl has been able to recite The Cat In the Hat since she was 27 months), we were super-excited to check out the Cindy Lou Who doll from Manhattan Toy.  (Check out Cindy here: LINK)

She only runs $20, but she’s super soft and cuddly – no hard edges to poke either me or my preschooler in the ear at 3 a.m., which is a pretty big plus in my book.  It also makes her age-appropriate for smaller kids, as well.  She’s about 15 inches tall, so she’s also a good size – fits in play cribs and car seats and such. 

When we opened the box and I showed her to Pickle, it’s probably an understatement to say she was excited.  Please forgive the graininess of these photos:

That would be Little A dancing around the room with and hugging Cindy Lou Who. 

That was from about a month and a half ago, and she’s still obsessed.  Here’s a photo from last week – she still sleeps with her every night:

She hadn’t been familiar with the story of the Grinch last Christmas (I’d felt like maybe she was a little too young) – but she is ALL OVER this story this year.  She loves having Cindy Lou Who (who she sometimes accidentally calls “Lolly Lou”) help all of her other stuffed animals stop being grinches.  The doll is very durable, so even all of this abuse hasn’t hurt her a bit!

So…  we want to give you a chance to grab one before the Christmas rush!  Please make a separate comment below if you’ve done each of the following things:

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      -  Go to http://www.manhattantoy.com and comment below with the line on their website that most interests you!

You can enter now through next Tuesday, November 19 at 9 p.m. CST.  We will announce a winner after that time, so please check back next Tuesday!

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!

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.