Ramblings on Gender Differences

I was looking at back to school backpacks for kids last night online and you had to click boy or girl before the website would display your backpack choices. At McDonald's you have to tell them boy or girl when you order a Happy Meal so they can give you the correct toy. When grocery shopping with 3 month old Fox wearing a plain white onesie, baby admirers needed to know boy or girl before they proceeded to gush over the baby cuteness. I've always been fascinated by gender differences and cultural roles, took the obligatory Women's Studies course in college, read Gloria Steinham, subscribed to Ms. magazine, and have personally varied between fighting, struggling with, accepting, and embracing gender stereotypes at different times in my life, but I'm even more aware of it and sensitive to it all now that I will personally be charged with raising a boy and a girl.

It irks me that any major retailer, especially toy stores, there are the pink aisles and the blue/camo/black/silver/red/green/grey aisles and nary a toy in between. It even irks me that the boy aisles seem to have a range of colors available, basically every color except pink and purple, and the girl aisles are solely pink and purple.

Things that could be gender neutral, like play food (don't we all eat food?) are shelved in the pink zone sending the clear message to old enough/savvy enough kids, like Turtle, that those must be girl things. It's one thing to set up a preschool classroom with a play kitchen corner, a book corner, a blocks corner, and some art supplies and find that the girls tend to convene in the play kitchen more often and the boys tend to be stuck in the block area most of the day- that's self-segregation and you still will see some cross over. I know Turtle likes to play kitchen and restaurant and house and doctor with the girls and the other boys, just not as much as he likes to build blocks and race cars and play dinosaur attack. But it's another thing to physically separate different kinds of toys and color label them as being the purview of only boys or girls. That kind of extreme genderization of playthings is offensive to me.

Legos? In the boy aisles. Doesn't my daughter need spatial skills and a sense of mastery, too? Let's walk my daughter into the Lego aisle and let her choose a set. Hmmm....do you want a Star Wars attack, sea monster attack, pirates attack, or soldiers attack set? I exaggerate a bit, but the fact is that the building toys are all designed for boys' interests.

When my then 2-year old nephew was going to become a big brother, I went searching for a baby doll that he could have so that when my sister nursed and attended to the new baby, he could have a baby to take care of also. I was hard pressed to find a baby that was not dressed in pink from head to toe with all pink accessories. I guess girls who play with dolls aren't even allowed to have pretend sons, only pretend daughters, let alone pretend gender neutral babies. And boys shouldn't be interested in baby dolls, even though we expect them to somehow grow up to be good, loving, nurturing fathers. I suppose they will practice those skills somehow with their attack Legos?

Backtire walks around the house holding and singing to a baby, changing her diaper, soothing her. He's a man and this is part of his real man's life. But Turtle is already less and less interested in playing with his baby doll because he's heard it through the grapevine that dolls are for girls. The funny thing? Turtle spends a lot of time racing and crashing Hot Wheels and having superheroes rescue good guys from bad guys and not much time taking care of baby doll or stuffed animals. But in real life, his dad is feeding and changing and cleaning and playing with children a lot more often than he is slaying bad guys. So, it seems like girl toys like play kitchens and dolls actually prepare both boys and girls better for a lot of what real life is all about than some of the boy toys do! I'm sure Backtire in his fantasies would rather be racing real cars and probably slaying real bad guys, too, but come to think about it Mommy might rather be doing other more stimulating things than feeding and cleaning up after children, also! Where are the girl toys that help girls with skills other than domestic ones? Pretty much in the boy aisles! Aaargh!

And then there's Storm. You know, the kid whose parents are trying to raise it to be gender neutral and hiding it's sex from all but close family members. I'm all for the sentiments behind the statement they are making in many ways and I sympathize, but come on. Let's get real. Is everyone really walking around calling it "it" because they can't use gender pronouns? Hey, come over and meet my little...sibling. Doesn't... it have such cute chubby thighs? And which bathroom shall it use? Good luck shopping for gender neutral clothing! and bathing suits! and underwear! or anything, for that matter! And have they started a counseling fund so the kid can deal with having been it's parents personal experiment? And why is it okay for it's older siblings and it's parents to have gender and ever other person it meets or characters in every storybook read to it, but not it? How realistic is the experiment when they know the sex, so it's impossible to not subtly bias how they act around it or what purchases they make? And what about the whole peeing standing up or sitting down thing?* I mean isn't the real sex going to come out pretty fast and all of this come crashing down? And what will the point have been? Plus, it seems they are operating on the assumption that our gender-based behaviors are all learned and that's simply not true.

There are very real hard-wired differences between the sexes, physiologically, hormonally, neurologically, that evolved to be there because they made our species successful. There are a lot of learned things on top of that, yes, and the interplay between those two is fascinating and impossible to fully understand and we'll never be able to tease out some of the nuances in terms of what we are born with versus what comes from even very early exposures in our lives. And what's wrong with that? Why aren't we recognizing and acknowledging and celebrating our gender differences instead of trying to squash them? Also, I want to know- when they take Storm to get a Happy Meal, how does that work?

Okay, so clearly I am conflicted myself about all of this. No, I'm not conflicted. I take that back. There are real gender differences and they are okay and even wonderful. But there are also extreme exaggerated gender expectations and stereotypes out there that don't need to be that way and aren't very healthy for us and our kids. Trying to make our kids into Storms is not a good idea, but neither is the pink vs. camo mentality. I'm trying to find a middle ground for my kids. (Pink camo?) They both need to build and cook and role play good guys vs. bad and race and fight and nurture and all of that stuff and to find who they are and to learn about their own gender and the opposite and to understand there's lots of overlap. So, I'll be working on that.

Meanwhile, I have to admit, that the other day I went into a children's clothing store that I've frequented on occasion over the years to buy Turtle clothes. But this time I was there to get something for Fox. I had a totally wild exhilarated kind of wide-eyed feeling as I realized that for the first time in 5 years I was going to cross the aisle into the girls' side of the store. I had never even set foot over there before. It was joyful and kind of overwhelming, both emotionally and literally (as there are way way way more choices of girls' clothes than boys'!) I have loved filling Turtle's drawers with the little bulldozers and aliens and monster trucks clothing and even though I have spent a lifetime eschewing pink flowery girly princess stuff for myself, I now plan to fully embrace and love the flowers and butterflies and ladybugs while I can! Vive la difference!

*Credit to my mom for pointing that one out!

Frustration Free Packaging!

(Photo stolen from Amazon's website)

3 years ago, I posted a rant about my frustration with toy packaging. I'm happy to report that Amazon is trying to help us and the environment with their new "frustration free packaging". They are working with certain toy manufacturers to have the toys packaged as simply as possible inside a plain cardboard box that is sturdy enough for the toy to be shipped in. If you want Amazon to gift wrap it, they will. The receiver will only have to tear a tape seal, open the plain box, and maybe open a couple of baggies of small parts inside and be ready to play with the toy. No more plastic that you can't cut through or endless twist ties. You get to the goods much faster and, best of all, the minimal and mostly cardboard packaging is much more environmentally friendly.

Now, the CO2 emissions from shipping the toy across the country, the resources used to manufacture the toy in the first place, and the materials some of the toys are made of that ultimately need to be disposed of when the toy's life cycle is over are still not environmentally friendly. But it's a small step in the right direction. And because Amazon is leading the way, with their gigantic volume they have some weight to throw around in terms of pressuring toy manufacturers to get on board with this. My overly ambitious hope is that we'll see these plain boxes show up next at our local toy retailers...

So, if you must buy new toys for the holidays this year, please consider looking on Amazon for the ones with frustration free packaging. And if you want to do better than that, buy, swap, or hand-me down used toys which have no packaging at all, don't need to be shipped across the country, probably have a lot of life left in them, and the kids will enjoy them just as much!

Complete Kitchen Remodel - Fast! and Free!

In a fit of annoyance earlier this year, I put our microwave on the floor in order to reclaim some precious counter space in our tiny galley kitchen.  It was kind of weird, but you know how you just get used to things.  We just bent down and put stuff in the microwave.  The bonus was the Turtle could reach it himself and got to have the official job of pressing the buttons.  When other people came over, they didn't quite know what to make of it, but whatever.  

I finally purchased this kitchen island and put it in the dining area to extend our kitchen counter.   

So now the microwave has a home along with the fruit bowls and cookbooks and I've got my workspace cleared.   I was so happy about this that I never even bothered to put anything inside the island yet.  When I went to open it to decide how to finally organize it, I found that Turtle had co-opted it and had been placing various toys in it.  (Oh, so that's where THAT's been!)  I had no idea.  

But yesterday I set about claiming my island, happily filling and organizing it, and then looked over and decided that Turtle's kitchen needed upgrading, too.  

First, I fashioned some stove-side utensil holders out of toilet paper rolls.  

Next, the oven was given a red-hot burner.  

I reused a gift bag decoration to add a vase of flowers above the sink, which is a giant lettuce container set into a cardboard box.  A small plastic bin is attached on the left to hold a sponge.  I can put a little water in this sink and it holds without leaking so Turtle can actually wash dishes in it.  The salad container pulls right up and out for dumping out.   

The sink itself was given a facelift.  Previously just a cardboard front, I cut cupboards in it for increased storage and covered it in reused wrapping paper.  

This up-ended diaper box had been divided with a shelf to make a crude pantry but never decorated.  I added a door to the bottom with rope handle, made from one side of a gift bag, to make a mini fridge and covered the wrest with leftover holiday wrapping paper.  

Turtle's kitchen is adjacent to mine, so he gets to use the hooks on my island for his canvas shopping bag, apron and pot holders.  The apron set was sewn by my sister and given as a xmas gift this year- cute, huh?  

Here's the "after" picture.  Turtle's kitchen is much brighter and cheerier now with all the colored wrapping paper and the flowers than the plain cardboard look it had before.  He has more storage with the utensil holders and under the sink cupboard and he gained a new appliance with the mini fridge.  All in all, not a bad remodel for 90 minutes of my time, a bunch of reused stuff that was lying around the house, and a lot of packing tape!  

He was so inspired that he set about making us a scrumptious meal.  Each person was served a variety of whole produce, eggs, and rigatoni.  Mmmm. Mmmm.  

This morning, Turtle told me he needed a kitchen timer.  So, now we have a play doh container decorated on the sides and with a printout of a real kitchen timer taped to the lid (Thank you, Google image search) and a large jingle bell inside so that when you shake it, the timer rings. As I write this, he is making me coffee with "spices and honey and milk and eggs".  This is his specialty, served in a reused fruit cup cup with half a plastic Easter egg sitting in it.  And muffins, which are play doh blobs in each hole of a mini muffin tin.  I am told that right now they are in the oven and we are waiting for them to "poof up".  

I love that he is working in his kitchen, using his imagination and creativity to prepare meals for us.  And I love that I get to use my imagination and creativity to make and improve his kitchen so that he can engage in this kind of play.  And I really love that I didn't buy and won't be someday getting rid of a $200 plastic play kitchen.  

Cardboard R&D

Turtle has a stuffed elephant named "Heffalump" (after the character in the Pooh movie).  I was informed Sunday night that Heffalump needed a motorcycle.  ASAP.  

Huh.  Okay...well, let's see...(how will I pull this off?)...let's go look in the project closet...

20 minutes later, we had ourselves a motorcycle: 

Turtle suggested breaking fat crayons to make the axles.

I made cardboard nuts to hold the axles to the bike.  

It worked well enough that Turtle deemed it wheelie worthy.  

Then we tested it with Heffalump, who isn't the most natural of riders.  But he held on okay for a few laps before spectacular failure of the front wheel...

Luckily, this design is easy to reassemble, so it kept up with another half an hour of play. Then, as suddenly as the idea had been sprung on me to build a motorcycle in the first place, I watched Turtle take it apart and start folding up the body.  "What are you doing?" I asked with more than a little frustration, since I had made most of the major engineering and assembly contributions.  "I need to crumple this.  It's not working very well.  Heffalump is too fat for this motorcycle."

I have to say I love the "I need to crumple this."  I'm thinking of using it at work to reduce my paperload.  

Backtire walked in during the crumpling and witnessed this exchange.  Being the real engineer of the family, he jumped right in with "No problem.  That was just a prototype.  We tested it and it wasn't good enough.  We'll have to build another one someday that fits Heffalump better."  And with that, we did some recycling and the motorcycle was no more.  

But now I find myself wandering the house thinking about how to improve our prototype.  

And I think this small experience held some great life lessons:  When you have an idea, pursue it.  When you want something, try building it yourself.  When things aren't working, don't be afraid to take them apart and try it differently. And, don't get married to your work. Sometimes you need to just crumple it.  

Who Is Spare Mindy?

It was long overdue.  I retrieved the small cardboard box from Turtle’s closet and opened it.   

There she was, swaddled in two layers of clear plastic – Spare Mindy.   

She’d been shipped to me by Fisher Price, who I called in a fit of parental anxiety.  At 18 months, Turtle had become attached, taking her everywhere, chewing on her head, and sleeping with her each night.  That Halloween, we drove back from the pumpkin patch with my sister in the backseat, trying to make small talk with her nephew, quizzing him about the doll’s name.  “Min – daah” he babbled randomly.  "Oh, Mindy!  That's a great name!" his Aunt deftly responded, keeping the conversation going.  And thus the doll became Mindy.  

Prior to becoming a parent, I thought it was ridiculous that parents would buy multiple extra copies of a favored toy just in case one was lost.  Loss is a part of life and I figured that kids needed to learn to get over it.  Plus, how indulgent and consumer-focused, right?  And, I didn’t want to have that five year old who drags around some filthy stuffed animal everywhere we go, so why start now? 

So, it was with chagrin that I found myself calling Fisher Price coveting a spare Mindy.  Who, by the way, is actually named Mia and can only be purchased as part of a set along with her traveling companion Roberto and the nameless red-headed female pilot of the Fisher Price plane. 

But prior to becoming a parent I didn’t understand that your kid can get so attached to a toy, derive so much security from it, and will only fall asleep if it is there.  That sleep deprivation and a desire to control what precious little you can about your day, and especially night, with your toddler can compel you to obtain a spare “lovey” (I hate that term) attachment object (not much better)… Mindy. Parents, you understand, right?

When I started this blog, we were in the throes of separation anxiety and 4 a.m. wake-ups.  A year and a half into all-consuming parenting and 6 months after a major move, I knew I needed an outlet and to try to slowly recapture a little bit of me.  The blog was a place to reflect on my life from a short distance away.  To be able to see myself calling Fisher Price and laugh at the irony.  To grapple with how much parenting had changed me and accept that I had become someone who would not feel better until I had a Spare Mindy in the closet.  Spare Mindy is a metaphor for all the crazy crap you never thought you’d do that you end up doing once you have a kid.  I’m sure I will have thousands more Spare Mindy moments as the years go on. 

Predictably, Mindy fell out of favor some months after I ordered the spare and her status for the past year has been reduced merely to chewed on and mostly ignored airline passenger who occasionally takes the school bus or is tied to a race car careening around the living room floor. 

So, when doing a major overhaul of Turtle’s closet a month ago, I took out Spare Mindy’s box and set her free.  It felt good as a mom to realize that I didn’t need her anymore. 

When I unwrapped her and offered her to Turtle, his response was utterly devoid of emotion and inarguably logical:     “I already have that.” 

Does anyone need a Spare Mindy?  

The Fruits of My Labor

As the holidays approach, I often start thinking about craft projects to undertake.  I love being crafty, but sometimes this is my only craft "season". So as my family knows, from often being the recipients of my efforts, there tends to be one creative crafty project I actually complete per year.  This year's inspiration:  

The Pottery Barn fabric fruit set my son has.  And you thought organic produce was expensive!  This small pile of inedible produce was almost $40 after tax and shipping.  But it's been used and appreciated way more than anything else I could have possibly gotten with that $40 gift certificate to Pottery Barn.  I decided to make fabric fruit of my own for Turtle's cousin, who will be receiving a play kitchen for Christmas.  (It's so great that they are so young I can post what they are getting for Christmas on the internet and they'll still have no idea!)

A trip to Jo-Ann's scored me two $4.99 stacks of fabric squares in produce colors and a bag of stuffing.  I started drawing patterns for fruit sections on paper based on examining the fruit we already had.  I winged it, looking at the purchased fruit for help and realizing that the degree of curvature, length, width, and number of sections are what makes the difference between a fat tomato, small orange, and a slim banana.  

A little while later, I had an orange, banana, and tomato!  A bit lumpy, yes. Some accidental square-ish corners.  But I had the hang of it.  And, hey, I haven't used a sewing machine in about 5 years.  To make the fruit better than this, you have to sew very smooth curves with no angles in the seams from lifting the foot up and turning the fabric like I did.  And if I did it again, I would stuff them more so they would fill out and be firmer.  If I have time later, I plan to add leaves and stems and such, too.  But I was excited to move on and tackle strawberries.  

I found this great red fabric with black dots on it that reminded me of strawberries, some green for the leaves, the green ribbon the fabric squares came tied in for stems, and a little leftover quilting batting (from the last sewing project 5 years ago). I drew the pattern by thinking about a strawberry and decided it would need 3 panels.  Pottery Barn does not have strawberries, so I am very proud of myself that I did this one with no model.  

Here's the sewn and stuffed strawberries, awaiting finishing touches.  To make the leaves, I cut star shapes out of batting, then traced it onto the green fabric with one of those white sewing pencils.  Then I sandwiched the batting between two layers of green fabric, stitched along my tracing and cut just outside the seams.  It would be way easier to just use felt, but I was determined to not go back to the store.  So, this worked to make leaves that keep their own shape.  

Next was hand stitching green ribbon to the center of each star and then stitching the star to the top of the strawberry, closing the strawberry as I went.   

Here is the first finished strawberry!  It was labor intensive, but totally worth it.  I had so much fun and was so happy with the result that I made 5 more, 3 for each boy.  It took most of my day today to sit around doing 6 strawberries, but it was really relaxing for me as I almost never get to just focus on working with my hands. And, I could talk to my family while I did it, so it was better than doing almost any other type of work that I usually find myself doing that requires brain power and my full attention.

Aren't they cute!  Turtle and his cousin will each receive a delicious basket of strawberries for Christmas.  His cousin will also receive all the other fruit I make over the next few days.  It's a lot of fun to make the kids their toys instead of just buying them and to know how much fun they'll have playing with them.  This was also a great craft for a busy person like me who doesn't often get to take the time because the items are small. You get to design, plan, and sew, but you can finish one piece of fruit in less than 30 minutes if you know what you are doing. So there is a great feeling of satisfaction and no danger that you will leave the project 80% done for years like there would be if I tackled trying to sew myself a whole outfit or something.  

I also picked up some colorful doggie themed fabric squares and was thinking the next small items I could easily make would be bean bags for the kids.  Rectangles stuffed with rice or beans- how easy is that?!  And I was even thinking of trying to create a dog chew toy out of some old jeans denim for my brother's new puppy.  But I have to figure out how to sew the seams super strong so it won't fall apart right away.  I have some old jingle bells that maybe could go inside...  

Let Them Play!

Driving the other day, I heard this story on NPR about Gever Tulley who founded The Tinkering School near San Francisco.  In this ultimate summer camp experience, kids get to stay for a week and build creations of their own design (with some guidance) and test them out. The use of power tools is encouraged, as is creativity, risk-taking, and intuition.  Kids must make real things and try them for real.  No models or look-alikes here.  They build boats and find out whether they'll sink or float when they get in them.  They cross bridges they've designed and drive cars and motorcycles they collaborated on.  They fail and fail again and get hurt and go back to the drawing board and fail again and think on it some more and persist until they succeed.  

Tulley says in the NPR interview that one of the experiences that inspired his camp was observing a mother scold and remind her son about her "no playing with sticks" rule.  I'm with Tulley on this one.  Lord help this next generation if they haven't even been allowed to play with sticks.  Why, when I visited Paraguay, the host family I stayed with had a 3 year old boy who I observed playing in the backyard unsupervised with his father's machete.  Okay, admittedly, that kind of freaked me out.  But, clearly we are overdoing it when we protect our kids from sticks (not to mention denying them a connection to nature and natural objects).   

Tulley is working on an upcoming book, "50 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Children Do" and gave a TED talk on 5 of them: 

This reminds me of the recently popular "Dangerous" books by Conn & Hal Iggulden.  Just today I read an article called "How to let kids be kids" in this month's Redbook.  It made the case for the downside of overscheduling our kids and overstructuring their play, quoting experts who explained the value of free play driven by curiosity about the world and how it works.  I remember reading a long time ago the quip that all toddlers start out by dropping and throwing and hitting things with the basic mental attitude of, "what will happen when I do this?" and that scientists are just the people who managed to not get that squashed out of them by their parents and the educational system.  

I'm so glad to see this resurging interest in letting kids be kids and just play and explore their world.  I remember the elaborate games my siblings and I used to invent on rainy days stuck inside and the little inventions I used to make when left with free time and craft supplies to think and tinker.  In elementary school I helped run the filmstrips (god, I'm old!) and the teacher would ask you to "rewind" the filmstrip when it was over, which was a laborious process done by hand. I took a toilet paper tube and an empty jewelry gift box, some scissors and glue, and invented a filmstrip rewinder. You could put the film roll in a tube on one end, feed it through a slot across the empty box into a slot in the tube on the other end and you could quickly rewind it into the second tube with your finger.  Plus, you could view the slides on it against the white background of the box as you did so.  

To this day, obviously, I remember the details of that invention, how it worked, and how proud I was of thinking of it, making it, and trying it out to find that it worked.  If you fill a kid's life with pre-packaged toys meant to be used in pre-thought of ways and guided activities with rules, how will they ever invent something?  or have the self-esteem that comes with that?  

Which reminds me to share with you an astounding article I read some months back called "How children lost the right to roam In four generations". In it, the author interviews one family and shows with maps the diminished range that each succeeding generation was allowed to explore unsupervised. I know that as an elementary aged kid, I regularly hopped on my bike or roller skates and went up to a couple miles out on my own or with friends. And that was sans helmet or cell phone or water bottle or firm deadline for arrival.   Now even though I'm in a sleepy suburban, family friendly neighborhood, I really wonder just how far I'll feel comfortable letting my son go.  Has anything actually changed in terms of the risk?  Or just my perception of it due to scary news stories and such?  It's an important question.  

For much more along these lines, check out Free Range Kids , a website devoted to helping "our kids embrace life!". It's got thought provoking articles and practical ideas on how to get back to the good-old-go-outside-and-play-until-dinnertime days!

I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on this topic.  How far were you allowed to roam as a kid?  Did you own a pocket knife, try driving a car, play with fire, etc, before you were a teen? 

Easy-Make Oven

Pictured above is a play kitchen, featuring life-like and cool retro styled appliances that are only $250 or so each, available at your local retail indulged child outlet. Don't get me wrong. They are beautiful pieces, nicer than what's in my own kitchen, despite their non-functionality. And I would have been very excited to play with them as a child. Who's kidding? They'd be fun to play with now. But, isn't it scary that you can take that same $250 and purchase a real live working oven or fridge?

After searching a bit online and flagging some less expensive play kitchen items for my son, it dawned on me that I could just make him a play kitchen. Having moved a few months ago, we've got our share of perfectly sized cardboard boxes. And I faintly remember that a long time ago I used to be a creative and crafty person who enjoyed doing just this sort of thing. That's before I allowed workaholicism and then new motherhood to take their toll.

So, I squirreled away materials for a few weeks. Then my mom coincidentally gave Turtle a set of toy pots, pans, and cooking utensils. Inspiration finally struck and, box cutter and packing tape in hand, I created my masterpiece.

Notable features: 4 red hot burners, see through oven door with velcro closure, pull out basket pantry below.

Accessories: Pantry items such as box of rice, can of beans, carton of milk, and oatmeal canister made from the real thing emptied & cleaned.

Tooting my own horn some more: Cut triangles out of picture on frozen pizza box to make slices of pizza, made realistic looking pancakes out of scrapbooking paper and cardboard, folded edges of silver coated cardboard inserts from ?? packaging from something I can't remember ?? to make cookie sheets/griddles.

Coming soon: Utensil holders made of toilet paper rolls glued to the side. And a sink/pantry unit and refrigerator.

This is fun! Turtle already loves it and has been making carrot soup in his stockpot and hot water in his teapot for what he calls "eatmeal" (oatmeal), and is trying to learn to flip pancakes with his mini spatula. The only downside is the lack of sturdiness factor, but the upside is that when he loses interest, it can be torn down and recycled.

Meanwhile, it's nice to know that when we move into our new house in a month, at least one of us will have a really nice kitchen!

So They Shan't Remain Nameless

It’s time for pseudonyms!

My almost 2 year old son will henceforth be referred to as “Turtle” in honor of the turtle riding toy he was pushing backwards at full speed when he did his concrete faceplant. Note to him: next time, let go of the handle on your way down.

You might think it’s creepy for me to name him after the toy that broke his nose, but he loves that toy and has fearlessly (forgetfully?) returned to speeding around with it. Plus, I’ve had some pretty cool times with other turtles, so there’s a lot of positive associations there.

In keeping with that tradition, I’d have to name my husband after one of the many “toys” he’s broken bones on over the years. But, CBR 1000, NT650, Ski Doo, and skull-of-some-other-guy-in-a-mud-football-game don’t really have a great ring to them. Plus there’s more than that to choose from. I just can’t keep track anymore. 

So, we’ll try “Backtire”, a nickname bestowed on him by his motorcycle buddies in honor of his insatiable need to speed around with the least number of wheels touching the ground as possible.

The apple clearly does not fall far from the tree.

Twist Ties from Hell

If you've bought a toddler toy lately, then you understand the title of this post.  One of the parenting magazines timed how long it took to extract bulldozers and dolls from their packaging and it was over 15 minutes in many cases.   That's where I read the best recommendation- to remove the toy completely from the packaging, install any required batteries, test it, and wrap it so that it is ready to play with instantly.  We did that for all of our gifts to toddler this year and it was great!  You can always save the original box, too, just in case, but why make the poor kid suffer waiting while you mangle the cardboard, slice your fingers open on that tough plastic, and send pieces of cut twist tie flinging all over the room, or worse, painstakingly try to unwind them.

 

It's too bad that toy companies feel compelled to have the toys "on display" or able to be touched & played with within their boxes, because I think that is what necessitates all the twist ties and tape and molded plastic to hold each accessory in the box and make it harder to steal.  If the toy and all of its parts were just inside of a sealed box, maybe with a window, less packaging would be necessary.  But, obviously over the years it has been found that consumers are more attracted to the exposed looking toy and so all the manufacturer's have gone in that direction.  Apparently, there has been a groundswell of consumer complaints, so the Washington Post reports the good news that we may see changes soon.  

Of course, besides the waiting, frustration, and injury that toy packaging causes, there's the environmental impact of overly packaged toys.  Answers to that include getting used toys, seeking out simply packaged toys, and at the very least, recycling.  But, if you don't feel you have a choice for certain products, check out these tools that have now been created to aid you in extracting your consumer good.  

Anyone have tips on companies with minimal or environmentally friendly toy packaging?  And while we're at it, eco friendly toys?