Toy Review 3: Melissa and Doug Wooden Bear Family Dress-Up Puzzle

Ahhhh, the last toy review. A family member purchased this Melissa and Doug Wooden Bear Family Dress-Up Puzzle for Callie. Some of the Melissa and Doug stuff I really like, some not so much, but this one is pretty great. It doesn't have any of the plastic pegs in the pieces as some wooden puzzles do. All three of the kids like to play with it, claiming a bear for themselves and acting out imaginary scenarios. Each bear in the family has several facial pieces to choose from, each with its own expression. This adds a little something beyond the normal mix-and-match clothing puzzles that I see so often, and Callie really gets a kick out of it!

My favorite thing about this puzzle is that the pieces store in a sectioned box onto which slides the puzzle base as a lid. No more hard, wooden puzzle pieces to step on or lose! You can just pop this baby on a shelf and go about your day.

I'd recommend this for the toddler and pre-kindergarten set. The head pieces are choking size, so don't buy it for the toddler who is still prone to sticking things in their mouth.

Overall rating (out of 5 stars): *****
Affordability: *****
Educational value: ****
Durability: *****
Ease of use: *****
Versatility: ****
Environmental Friendliness: ****
Fun: *****

A Photo Mosaic to Ring in the New Year (Meme)

1. Growing Pains, 2. Julia Ormond (of whom there was no photo, apparently), 3. Pregnancy, 4. Feeling at Home, 5. Auld Lange Syne, 6. Homebirth, 7. Columnar Apple Trees, 8. Inner Peace, 9. Blissful, 10. A Greek Olive Grove, 11. Domestic Bliss, 12. Family of six

The answers to these questions are above:
1. 1. Looking back on 2008, what might the theme have been?
2. If 2008 was a movie, who would play you?
3. What was your greatest gift of 2008?
4. What is your New Year Resolution, or, what are you committing to this year?
5. If January could be represented by one song, what would it be?
6. What do you wish for your body in 2009?
7. Name one new thing you would love to try in the New Year.
8. What do you long for 2009 to bring?
9. If that happened, how would you feel?
10. Where would you love to vacation in 2009 if money were no object?
11. What would you like the theme of 2009 to be?
12. If 2009 was a book, and the title was 5 words or less, what might the title be?

To create your own New Year's mosaic, type the answer to each of the 12 questions in the Flickr search page, choose a photo from the first page of search results only, then copy and paste the URL of the photo into the mosaic maker. Don't forget to adjust the number of rows and columns in your mosaic to accomodate all 12 photos. Et voila!

Thanks to Suzie for sharing this with her readers and inviting them to join in!

Most of all, have a wonderful, wonderful New Year, readers. :-)

Toy Review 2: Disney Princess Super Playhouse Tent with Lights

Picture from toysrus.com

Next up comes the toy with the absolute worst rating from us. This is a toy that will be returned for sure. I'm not sure where this was purchased because it was bought by a family member for Annie. Let's first put aside the whole Disney princess character debate, okay? Okay. Thanks. The real problems with this toy have nothing to do with its nourishment for the young girl's soul.

All right, all right. In the interest of staying positive, I will say that Annie was thrilled when she got this. Though we already have a playhouse type thing, she is much more into castles than she is into cottages, so we acquiesced and opened it despite my distaste for duplicate gifts. The thing is humongous and can fit all three of my kids comfortably for a little tea party or refuge from attacking skeleton armies (I'll let you guess which scenario belongs to which child's imagination).

Now onto the cons. My first and biggest complaint is that the tent just doesn't work. The poles (plastic, of course) are meant to be inserted into channels in the fabric shell, but almost all of the poles are about an inch too long to fit into the channels! This means that they cannot be secured by the velcro flaps and slide out with just a bit of jostling by the children, forcing the roof to collapse. I looked online at various sites to see if others had this problem, and they had. In fact, this product got only 2 stars on the Toys 'R' Us website. There were also poles to expand the turret rooms, but the channels for these were actually sewn shut on our particular playhut.

The problems mentioned above are easily and cheaply solved (wood dowels cut to size, paring down the plastic poles, etc.), but when you pay $50 for an item, there shouldn't be any immediate need to fix things, right?

Did I mention that the playhouse actually requires batteries!? There are LED lights around the doorway of the castle, apparently "for safe nighttime play" (toysrus.com again). So... polyester shell, plastic skeleton, battery-powered LED lights, foreign made... not the most eco-conscious toy on the market.

I would absolutely not recommend this product to anyone.

Overall rating (out of 5 stars): *
Affordability: ***
Educational value: **
Durability: *
Ease of use: *
Versatility: ****
Environmental Friendliness: *
Fun: ***

Toy Review 1: Quadrilla Marble Railway Basic Set

So, the gift-giving holidays of 2008 are over. Phew! As usual, between us, their grandparents, aunts, and uncles, the kids got more than they asked for and more than they needed. Some of it was wonderful and some of it was... well, returnable. I thought that over the next week I'd give reviews of some of the best and worst gifts given to our children, not to brag about what they got, but as a guide to my fellow parents out there.

First up is one of the best toys: the Quadrilla Marble Railway Basic Set. This was actually purchased by me for Airius (on sale through Oompa Toys) after reading every review I could find online. Airius loves to work with his hands but still lacks the fine motor skills needed for writing, drawing, and many other creative endeavors, so I thought this might be a nice step up from the typical building blocks that he's been playing with for years.

My favorite thing about this product is the endless learning opportunities it provides. Each block has its own specific function, so it requires some problem solving skills and a basic grasp of gravity/physics to form an effective marble run. The manufacturer provides a guide with building instructions for several fun configurations, but my kids almost immediately wanted to go into uncharted territory and make their own setups. Awesome!

My biggest complaint about the Quadrilla is that it is touted as being a wooden toy, but there are actually plastic parts to it. Each of the wooden blocks has a small plastic ring at its junction point, and some of the blocks have other plastic bits to guide the marbles. The wooden pieces are beautiful, though, and the blocks are dyed in water-based stains. A lesser complaint is that the structures are a bit delicate once they're set up. It's relatively easy to knock things out of whack while sending down a deluge of marbles, which of course makes the marbles go everywhere, but as long as things don't get too rambunctious it usually stays intact. There are plastic sets that lock together more securely if you don't mind the tradeoff of plastic versus wood. The occassional diversions are great learning opportunities, if you ask me, requiring the kids to slow down and troubleshoot their structure to figure out just where things are going awry.

There are many add-ons for the basic set that can be purchased to keep your child's imagination growing. We haven't yet tried any of these or shown them to the kids because I'm trying to discourage "collector mentality," but we will be keeping them in mind for later gifts if the kids seem interested.

Overall, this is a product I would highly recommend to other parents. Even today, nearly a week after it was opened, all of the kids are enjoying this toy. The Quadrilla is much, much more expensive than its fully plastic counterparts, as is to be expected, but I think the extra price is worth it.

Overall rating (out of 5 stars): ****
Affordability: ***
Educational value: ****
Durability: ****
Ease of use: **** (recommended for the 5 and up crowd especially)
Versatility: *****
Environmental Friendliness: ** (they get docked extra for misleading advertising)
Fun: *****

Almost Post-Holiday

Two holiday visits down, one more to go.

This is the first holiday when we haven't had some huge catastrophe putting a pall over everything. No deaths, no huge family feuds, no major problems with the house or cars. Phew! I managed to get myself well in time for Yule, but my Annie girl got very, very sick a couple days before Christmas. She had to stay home from the revelries that took place with The Husband's dad's side of the family, and she was actually happy about it. That should give you some idea of just how miserable the poor kid was. I'm hoping she's well enough to go the The Husband's mom's side tomorrow.

We even managed to get the ornaments on the tree!

I've had a billion and one posts lined up but haven't managed to get to actually putting them together and publishing them between my own illness and Annie's and the general chaos that surrounds this time of year. Hopefully, I'll get back on track soon.

Belated Beggar's Night Post

I didn't know if we were going to make the trick-or-treating rounds this year. The girls, The Husband, and I had all finally stopped vomiting, but now the girls were making explosions from the other end. Oy. I could easily envision the mess that would happen in front of some poor neighbor's house when we couldn't get back to the house in time...

But we decided to go when the girls seemed to be taking a break from illness. The Husband always insists that we make the hour drive out to his mother's house to trick-or-treat there, where he feels most at home and comfortable. At least this way his mom gets to see the kids all dressed up. This year we walked for about an hour. Normally, it's a much shorter jaunt, but the kids are getting older and are much more capable of convincing Daddy to keep going--er, I mean-- they're much more capable of making the walk.

As you can see, Annie was a witch, Airius was The Incredible Hulk (he's never even seen the movie or cartoon), and Callie was Tinkerbell. Traditionally, our costumes are homemade, but this year was different. The Husband, my great eco-saboteur, decided to buy costumes for Annie and Airius without asking me first. We already had the Tinkerbell costume, given to Callie by Daniel's mom for Christmas, I think. I'm not bitter, I swear. ;)


Finally, bags bulging with sugary goodness, we headed back to my mother-in-law's home for a quick dinner and then... THE CANDY GORGE. Yes, I'm a bad mother. I don't often give my kids candy, and we're not a "dessert" type of family simply because I haven't perfected my cooking/baking skills yet. So, the holidays are a sweet time for my kids. Beggar's Night especially, I let them eat their fill of candy (after dinner, of course) with no intervention from Mom. Airius is always the first to stop and Annie is always the last. After the initial gorge, though, Mommy confiscates all candy and, with a wave of my magic wand, it all disappears. :)

What do I do with all the candy? I snitch a few of my childhood favorites, and the Husband, who has a huge sweet tooth, eats his fill. I sort through for things that will last awhile and stash that in a secret place (secret from The Husband AND the kids) to stuff stockings at Yule where the gorge will be repeated.

Merry Autumnal Equinox

A little equinox magic.

It may be just the slime trail of one of our resident spotted leopard slugs, but I was mesmerized by this bit of iridescent beauty on Mama Maple. It reminds me of something out the landscape of The Labyrinth. Even during these very rough times, there's magic all around us, things to enjoy, glimpses of bliss and beauty, moments without anxiety, fear, or depression.

The additional magic this year is that today is also the last day of my first trimester of pregnancy. Now I can take a deep breath, relax a little, and feel a little more energetic. I've already felt just a few little kicks, though they're still few and far between, and nothing is quite as blissful as that!

The equinox is a bittersweet time for me. In my faith, it is a day of celebration, a holiday, but it feels far too much like a farewell to me. Though I love the cooling days, the upcoming splendour of the maples' autumnal color, cuddling with all three of my babes under one huge blanket, the equinox is a reminder of the coming winter and much darker days ahead. There are many ways that I try to combat my winter blues, but those are best saved for posts to come. For now, I'll revel in the day of this annual event and be thankful for the familiar rhythm of the dance of our planet around the sun.

Time to bask in the waning sun...

Happy Labor Day!

Today is not just an American national holiday, it also happens to be the birthday of my baby brother. That's him in the picture having been karate chopped on his sunburned shoulders by Annie. When Uncle Philip's around, there are no holds barred. The children wrestle with him, beat him, beg him to toss them in the air or swing them in all manner of dangerous ways, etc. He's the only adult I know that has enough energy to keep up with all three of my kids! We miss him everyday and wish that he lived much, much closer. Happy birthday, little brother. Exactly two years and two days after I was born, you entered the world to torture me for the next 18 years, but we all still love you!

My birthday just passed, but the celebration has yet to take place. Even today, on Labor Day, The Husband is working. He won't have a day off until Wednesday, at which point he will have worked eight days and countless hours in a row. Tuesday he's doing 16 hours, so I plan to let him sleep in a little on Wednesday before I head off to my first ultrasound for this baby! The whole family is excited about seeing this little one for the very first time. Then we have the open house for Head Start that evening, so maybe Thursday. Of course, there are dentist appointments for all of us (excluding The Bean) that day, and we have to drive an hour each way for those, so... If I can just get my chicken paprikas in on one of those days, I'll be happy! The recipe is forthcoming, I promise. Now, I'm off to do some more laundry.

I hope all of you are having a joyful and restful day.

The Day in Review

Getting dressed in our patriotic best.


Lots of snuggling and lovin'.


Catching fireflies to pass the time while waiting for...


this.


Hope everyone had a thrilling and safe 4th of July.

Independence Day

It's amazing what a difference a year can make. Independence Day means something so different to me now than it did the last time it rolled around. Anyone who's been reading this blog knows that I've been participating in Sharon's Independence Days Challenge. For the most part, that challenge is about food independence, but wrapped up and interwoven with that is independence from so much more. When you grow your own food, you're a little less dependent on oil, a little less dependent on others for your health and protection from disease, a little less dependent on the ethical code of others to make sure your food has been properly and humanely treated before slaughter, etc.

All of these things are good for me and my family, and they're all baby steps to help us on our journey to a simpler, more earth friendly, more people friendly, more (w)holistic, more self-sufficient life. But there are things that we don't want to be independent of. We don't want to be independent of our families, our neighbors, our community, our country, the world. Just because I want to grow my own food, produce my own energy, take responsibility for the upbringing of my own children, and reduce my impact on the planet does not mean that I want to close myself off. It does not mean that I want to hide away in my little bit of self-created paradise and chuckle as the world goes down in flames around me. I've heard so many people (including The Husband) voice their fear that growing your own food or reskilling yourself for possible future peril will only mean that you'll be targeted when disaster strikes. People will steal your food, your solar panels, your chickens, your goats, so on and so forth. I don't deny that there are people out there for whom that will be their first impulse, but someone has to be capable and willing to teach others what they need to know, right? I don't need to be free to be FREE. You know what I mean? Eugene V. Debs, American union leader, said it so much better than I can in a 1908 speech:

Now my friends, I am opposed to the system of society in which we live today, not because I lack the natural equipment to do for myself but because I am not satisfied to make myself comfortable knowing that there are thousands of my fellow men who suffer for the barest necessities of life. We were taught under the old ethic that man's business on this earth was to look out for himself. That was the ethic of the jungle; the ethic of the wild beast. Take care of yourself, no matter what may become of your fellow man. Thousands of years ago the question was asked; ''Am I my brother's keeper?'' That question has never yet been answered in a way that is satisfactory to civilized society.

Yes, I am my brother's keeper. I am under a moral obligation to him that is inspired, not by any maudlin sentimentality but by the higher duty I owe myself. What would you think me if I were capable of seating myself at a table and gorging myself with food and saw about me the children of my fellow beings starving to death.

Seek independence from those things which weigh you down, friends, but don't forget to take someone along with you...