At seven months old (almost EIGHT months old, holy crap), these are Pippa's favorite toys:
- Chatterbox Telephone: I was shopping with my mom when we saw this old toy. I remember loving Chatterbox but I doubted Pippa would be interested in it. It doesn't have the bells and whistles of today's new toys. But my mom insisted on buying it, and thank God, because it's Pippa's favorite toy by a mile. She cannot get enough of Chatterbox. She would probably sleep with Chatterbox if I let her. When I pretend to talk on the phone, she cracks up, even though she has never seen am actual real rotary phone. We do not even have a phone hooked up to our land line! We just use the land line for internet stuff. Thanks to Chatterbox, Pippa will probably assume that in the Old Days, all phones had wheels, blinking eyes and pull cords.
- Water bottles: The best non-toy toy. End of discussion.
- Mommy's iPhone: No, wait, let's reopen that discussion. THIS is Pippa's favorite non-toy toy. She especially likes to slobber all over my iPhone until the speaker is clogged with drool. If Pippa was writing this blog entry, she would argue that Mommy's iPhone is the best non-toy toy, end of discussion. But I maintain that the water bottle is the best non-toy toy because if the Sweet Pea destroys it, you are out $2.00 at most.
- The Activity Triangle: Pippa has loved this toy for two months strong and her love for it keeps growing stronger and stronger.
- The remote control: I actually had to give Pippa the remote control to get her to sit still for some Halloween costume portraits. Then the remote control disappeared. We found the remote two days later completely buried under the couch pillows. No idea how Pippa accomplished this feat, but it prompted Nathan to give her a defunct remote from some forgotten VCR. Ten bucks says she'll still want to drool all over the real remote when she's sitting in daddy's lap.
- Keys: She would like to play with my keys, but I have refused this desire to date. I'm afraid she'll cut or stab herself. Instead, I let her play with a set of teething keys that can go in the freezer. When I open the freezer and Pippa sees the keys, she waves her arms around in excitement.
- Butterfly Spinner: My parents have this one at their house, and there's an old battered one at our mommy and me class. Pippa loves any variation of this toy. We actually don't have one for our house! Shocking, I know.
- Stack and Roll Cups: The folks at Fisher Price really know their shit. This toy seems so simple, and yet Pippa is wild about it.
- Freddie the Firefly: We own two, and my parents have one as well. This thing must be bewitched because Pippa is mesmerized whenever I fly it about the room.
- Whoozit - Pippa is obsessed with her Whoozit, but she hates riding in the car if she's alone in the backseat. Solution: I keep the Whoozit in my car, and she only gets to play with it there. So far, this strategy has been an unmitigated success.
- Mommy's hair - So fun to yank! Bonus points if you can make mommy cry.
- Einstein ball: The Baby Einstein toys are consistently good.
- Rhyme and discover book: I did not want to buy this toy. It's a plastic book with lots of moving parts and music, and that felt sacrilegious to this bookworm. But it looked like the perfect toy to entertain the Sweet Pea during our road trip to Sonoma, so I bought it anyway. Then Pippa got a cold so we cancelled the trip, and I brought the toy out since my sick baby deserved a new toy. And oh but she loves her musical book.
- Toys at our mommy and me class: there are an assortment of toys available at our Mommy and Me class. And Pippa always lunges for the toy that looks like it is harboring the bubonic plague.
- Bead mazes: These are a double edged sword. Pippa gets very excited when she spots a bead maze, but she gets uber frustrated when she discovers she cannot put the entire thing in her mouth. As she desperately tries to get all the beads in her mouth, she loses her balance and topples over, bringing the bead maze down on top of her. Which scares her shitless, causing her to scream as if she is being eaten alive by killer pandas. This means she can only play with a bead maze if I am sitting no more than six inches away from her.
- Nuby teethers: Thank you, Nuby, your teethers were clearly designed by Jesus himself.
- That toy the dog ate: Thanks, Rowan. You asshat.
- Balloon: I bought Pippa a balloon the day she got her second flu shot. I figured she deserved a balloon even if she forgot about the shot 45 seconds after it happened. I splurged on a foil butterfly and it's still floating merrily in our den. But once I brought the damn balloon into the house, I realized it was a huge hazard. Stupid Mommy.
- Mirrors, especially this one: At first, I used the mirror to trick Pippa into enjoying tummy time. Now I'm using the mirror to encourage Pippa to crawl. The girl can move, but she prefers scooting around on her butt through a series of intricate moves. And she will butt scoot towards anything interesting except her mirror. If she sees the damn mirror, she screams until I put it within her tiny arms' reach.
- Sea Dreams Soother: This gizmo helped Pippa nap for about six weeks. Now I save it for emergencies, e.g. she's teething and pissed at the entire world and needs a distraction from her dumbass teeth which are taking their sweet time arriving and wrecking havoc upon her beleaguered.
- Daddy's hair: Almost as fun as Mommy's hair, but harder to grasp.
- Desperation Dinosaur: Fisher Price does not actually call this toy the Desperation Dinosaur. That's my moniker for my favorite prehistoric beast. I have only brought it out twice, when Pippa had a fever from her second flu shot. She was miserable, but the Desperation Dinosaur cheered her up with its popping magic. The Desperation Dinosaur lives in our guest room, away from Pippa's other toys. It's an insurance policy against sick/rainy days.
- Jack in the Box (Maybe): I let Pippa play with a clown Jack in the Box when we were at Babies R Us a couple of weeks ago. She clearly enjoyed the toy, but she enjoys anything that is (a) colorful and (b) chewable. (Her definition of "chewable" is much broader than mine.) But baby's are easy to trick, so I dumped the Jack in the Box in the baby food aisle when the Sweet Pea wasn't looking. Maybe Santa will bring one for Christmas.
- ABC floor tiles: I bought these at Babies R Us to soften the tile floor in our den. I thought I was just buying flooring but Pippa loves them. As she gets older, we'll be able to reconfigure the tiles into tunnels, forts, etc.
