Today I’m grateful for… distraction

With all this sh#t happening lately, with people dying far too young, and my accidental new home Queensland being washed over with a flood that would be worth mentioning in the Bible (if they ever bring out a sequel), 2011 doesn’t really start too great, and my woe to face life with more serenity is already being bitterly tested. (An email from overseas last night only added to that with potential for more family dramarama. Argh.).

But we will have to make do with it, I guess, now that we have already opened the package… So while it’s good to roll up our sleeves and get into it, sometimes, in times of crisis, of drama, of heart break, you just can’t take it anymore and want to change your mind a little, to refreshen your battery and get your spirit up, well, then there is always : distraction. (If feeling down becomes a more serious and ongoing state of mind, please also read my post about depression. Or just talk about it. To anyone. It’s ok to be NOT Ok. Ok?) 

Crafty – Ahoy Pirates ! (cardboxing a pirate ship)

The last months were all about HarrHarr! – Pirates!
For Tornados Birthday, I prepared a treasure hunt, we then went to SeaWorld on the following weekend (pirate show) and by Halloween, first at kindy and then at a neighbour’s party, we knew our dressup/moustache routine. We played A LOT of pirate games with the Lego and the Fisherprice men too, but we only had small or makeshift boats (shoe boxes) ..
Then I started a project and it did not look too bad – but I could not find anything for a stable big mast! This weekend I finally dug out a tube from a (broken) play tent. I think the red sails are a good effect.
Obviously, it’s not a very true reconstruction (oh, Fisherprice has a really awesome set)  but I am very glad to say that Tornado was, again, very happy  with our homemade and recycled cardboard version, especially, because I tried to satisfy his wishes for certain features, like the outlook on top of the mast, an anchor on a string and, a trapdoor for the “cabin part”.

"Who you gonna call..? – Ghostbusters! (Cheap as Craft)

When Tornado was 3, my husband’s teenage kids were babysitting him one afternoon, and to pass the time, they decided to watch a DVD – and chose “Ghostbusters”. Now, in the rather wide range of movies of Awesome’s collection, this was probably a wise choice in their eyes (it’s rated PG, I just checked) and I remember loving that movie when it first came out (and I was their age) but I would have known that it was WAY to scary for my boy!  At the time, he would run out of the room at the ‘scary scene’ in “Cars” when Mater takes Lightening McQueen out at night to scare the Tractor-cows – before the big Monster-mower even appears! Even today, at almost 5 and very keen on watching all kind of ‘scary’ animation (Ben10, Dragon Booster and the like), Tornado is still pretty sensitive when it comes to ‘real scary’ (+music+darkness) on the screen. And while special effects have come a long way since 1984, for him, it would have been ‘real horror’ actually.

In any case, although he never saw the movie to the end (my stepkids would have realized their mistake after the first scenes..), I heard about it for weeks. There wasn’t a real increase of nightmares, but he certainly was impressed and we talked about it A LOT. We still talk about it, and he still doesn’t want to see it (yet) but we have seen the animated series ‘The Real Ghostbusters’ at some point. Far less scary. (But why is Egon now blond??)
There are complete episodes on youtube, for aficionados.

So for some reason, this week he wanted to ‘play Ghostbusters’, so I printed out a few stickers for his shirt (and mine) and made him a very simple but very efficient “Proton Gun” that I connected to his little backpack with a rest of cable-tidy tube from Ikea.

A teddy became a ghost with an old sheet and we had lots of fun!.. and playfully tackled, any eventual residual fears that he might still have about ghosts (we know they’re just ‘pretend’ but still..) especially with all that talk about funerals and mummies lately.

And of course, more stickers had to be printed to transform some Lego guys for further play:   

On a sidenote : We also had a look at the music video, it’s delightfully 80s and Chevy Chase (who played the repairman in the recent “Hot Tub Time Machine” which was so much better than I had suspected) doing this trick with a cigarette – unthinkable today, almost criminal some would say, as it would have inspired many young boys to learn the same thing (and smoke).
My husband can still do it.

More ‘Cheap as Craft’ : “Cardboard City“

Let’s play funeral, Mami!

Yesterday, Tornado and me played “Lego Funeral”.
No, you can’t buy it in a box set. Not yet.

For Tornado boy it was the logical suite to declaring a Lego fireman “really dead this time“. He was killed in a (for me) confusing war, that involved two kings, a flying saucer with wicked sound effects, a pyramid made from cardboard and a mysterious deadly weapon in the form of a Lego fish.

Cheap As Craft – Bow & Arrow

Today, my husband emptied out a sports bag and we recovered two perfectly new shoe laces. Perfect on the day where I had promised Tornado to built him bow and arrow without really knowing what I would use. While he was cutting out the feathers for his headband I worked on his latest weapon :

The idea was of course to spend zero money but still fabricate a reasonably functional, stable toy for him – without danger of injury for either himself or the other inhabitants of the house….

I used a peg from the irrigation system that Dogthing is systematically unearthing and forever chewing on. The plastic has just the right flexibility.
The arrow is fully out of cardboard with stabilising, rolled cardboard inside and relatively heavy. The tension of the shoelace looks strong but allows only for minimal propulsion really. After a little bit of training, the arrow flew far enough to make one little indian VERY happy! 

Cheap as craft – Cardboard City

When I was little, I had a dollhouse. It was an old, rather simple model, more like a transformed bookshelf with a hint of a roof, but my dad repainted it and my mum put new carpets and curtains in, and I had it for years.  I am hoping some girl still plays with it today, my family’s wanderlust had my mother give it away before she could pass it back to me for my own children, but I am sure the house got a new home.

Now I have a boy, and this boy – as explained in a former post – has a big passion for all kinds of little men in uniform, Police, Firemen etc. Now the series Imaginext from FisherPrice offers only limited housing for the different sets we have. We do have the big fire station, but I have never once seen the Police Station found on the internet. And I am a bit on a tight budget, so one day, when my son said “I really need a jail !!” I just made him this:

I know! It’s rather simple. It’s not rally all that awesome. I used a cardboard box I had just brought home from the shops and only material I had at hand. The bars at the window are toothpicks…But for my boy not only it was a lot of fun to assist me building it, he is playing with it ever since .

I was so pleased with his joy about the jailhouse that I gave into his request to make him more buildings and have since then worked on a whole city (my favourite is the church, actually it even has a bell with a string in it now!)

It’s fun, it’s easy, it’s cheap – anybody can do it.

What’s the last thing you have done from scratch for your kids ?

"imaginext". About Love and Hate and Fisher-Price

In the 70s,  when I grew up, the new toy on the block was Playmobil (curiously, Brandstätter, the German makers, decided they had to make smaller toys because of the ongoing oil crisis and the rising prices for raw materials), they did not have as much as they do now, but it was quite popular. Their pirate ship was totally awesome.

My friend Marc had one and he was making a big deal about it.
Rich kid show-off.

My (poorer) parents then chose to buy me PlayBig, the knock-off copy cat (which was actually more exact in details and proportions of the figures). They had to stop production a few years later. The Playmobil man is in the middle with the dumb but steady smile because he knew he would win -  big time.

I believe I had gotten this set with the road construction. I wasn’t too thrilled. Fortunately, my brother had lots of Lego and matchbox cars, and it did not really damage me for life. I have actually grown up to a person who tries to be unimpressed by brands and ‘originals’ which is basically what you have to do when you don’t have enough cash to always get the latest thing in fashion. Now that is something I will try to transmit to my son.
Or make lots of money soon.

Fast forward .. 30 years (yep!). Playmobil is hard to get in Australia.

After seeing how happily my boy played with an old Fisher-Price fortress and the knights that my husband found in his shed from his now teenage son, for his 3rd birthday, he got him this :

It was the beginning of a love/hate relationship with the “Imaginext” line of Fisher-Price for me.  Over time, we bought him – or he made us buy – the following sets all themed on emergency and rescue :

My fav’ is the police horse, just check out this face – it means business !

So I love these toys it because :

• my son would spent HOURS playing with his “little men” – even without me, and i finally got stuff done for myself. Toddler’s mum in heaven.
• they would not break easily (at least not at first)
• they were themed on emergency and rescue professions, something my son was – and still is – very interested in, bless him
• the details and the facial expressions were kind of cool (raised eyebrows, sunglasses.. ) – much better than the Playmobil idiot smile.

But I hate them because

• we kept losing the removable jackets and other accessories and this caused tremendous distress and drama. I have lost many hours of my life searching for them (allowing him to take 3 firemen on an overseas journey was one of the biggest mistakes I ever made)
• different to the old knights that are simpler in conception but survived years of play and then more years in storage, they are now losing their arms and I keep having to repair them with superglue. and then repair them again because he takes them into the bath. The printed on faces also come off. The are now a miserable bunch of disfigured amputees really
• you just can’t always get the set you want in Australia it seems..
• instead of expanding the city theme, they have broadened their range of toys first to to superheroes, robots and merchandising stuff (toy story3) like everybody else. there are also knights and pirates now, but I would have liked to expand the collection on more contemporary – and real life – stuff. (there is already a lot of superhero stuff going on in my son’s life anyway.)

But he still plays a lot with them and we have started building stuff ourselves to enrich the experience (i make a ‘cheap as craft post’ about it)

And now I see they have come up with this :

A-dorable aliens ! I want them. But I can’t have them.
Because my son would take them from me.
Because he is totally mean and takes all MY toys.

What’s your toy story ?
Any toys that mean a lot to your child AND to you.. ?

***

PS : I do not want to withhold two curiosities I found while researching pictures for this post.

This dad posts about a campaign by UNICEF. I feared this was part of the now huge range of Playmobil series, but I think it’s a good idea anyway :
http://daddytypes.com/2007/12/03/aww_playmobil_child_soldiers_c.php

The operation scene seems to be one of the more recent conceptions. I thought this website was rather curious…http://www.dimensionsguide.com/dimension-of-a-playmobil/