I found a reel the other day and it said “My toxic trait is that when I get overstimulated by stuff, I just start throwing it away.” and that is for sure me.
I don’t like stuff, I don’t like toys everywhere, I don’t like clutter. In my house, everything has a place and there’s a place for everything. Now that doesn’t mean my house is always clean but it does mean that it’s pretty easy to clean up because there’s not a lot of stuff.
This theory backfired on me the other day when I kicked Carver off of screens for the afternoon. Gannon LOVES screen free time. He will play legos and army men ALL DAY LONG without even thinking about the TV or the computer. Carver on the other hand, is a tech whiz and teaches himself how to play new games on the xbox all the time.
So I told Carver to find something to do and he said “Mom, what do you want me to do? We don’t have any toys.” Well crap. Now don’t get me wrong, we have toys. We have duplo legos and little Legos coming out of our ears. We’ve got a football and a pool. We’ve got bricks and blocks to stack and play. Anders has a few age appropriate toys but for Carver, there’s really not a ton of options to truly PLAY with.
So I turned to Amazon. I sat down with the boys and we came up with a wish list. So far we LOVE the toys we chose and I wanted to share them with you all.
First up is this game cube. Yes, technically its still electronics but it’s kind of a fun brain stimulating toy. It came with instructions but Carver (my tech whiz) picked it up and started playing it within minutes. Because we picked out the toys together and read the reviews, he turns to me and said “Mom, give this a five star review on Amazon!”
It’s a little spendy but super easy to take on car rides and we got it on sale. It’s got great reviews and keeps Carver entertained for long periods of time. It’s easily rechargeable too. This would be a great birthday present for kiddos between 6 and 9 years old. Carver figured out all the games right away, he’s almost 8 but now he’s playing to beat his previous high score. Here is the link: https://amzn.to/3Xc6iRe
Next up is a Montessori toy for Anders. He was in the nursery at church and they said he loved playing with this car ramp. So I found it online and boy he sure does love it. It only comes with four cars so you can imagine how quickly those would get lost BUT they do have replacement cars.
For our Army Man Gan (and Carver) we got some Army guy toys. Just little green Army men but what really made them fun were these army themed magnetiles. Gannon also told me that these deserve a five star review. The boys have been pretend battling (I’ve had to ban nuclear weapons in the Friedman home) ever since they came.
and of course we’ve gotta have water toys. We got our pool from Amazon this year and the boys have been loving it, even when I think its way too cold. They had some friends over the other day and here they are in the pool:
We also got these magnetic reusable water balloons that have great reviews on Amazon and now I see why. The boys easily refill them in the pool and it doesn’t leave the little tiny pieces all over the yard.
So that’s what is new (literally) at the Friedman house. We got a few other toys too, a pokemon puzzle, a rubics cube, and some other “boredom buster” toys. We are also making a stop to our local toy lending library where (with a small membership fee) you can rent and borrow toys for 3 weeks at a time and then return them to pick out more toys. I think this is an awesome program and I can’t wait to check it out and see what they have to help keep the boys off the TV this Summer.
Leave a Reply