little feet, big sky

Now that Spice is practically a toddler, it’s been a challenge finding natural, non-electronic toys that are age-appropriate and interesting.

The Uncle Goose blocks have been a total hit. While she’s too young to stack them yet, we have a slick little game where I make columns of 5 blocks all around the room and she knocks them down. Sometimes we go for broke and I try to see how high I can build before she bulldozes my tower.

Next up would be this pushcart. It actually belonged to my aunt’s (in the UK) neighbor’s son, who is now twenty, so this is a classic homemade toy. I sometimes see modern ones going for upwards of $80! This one holds most of her Uncle Goose blocks perfectly and she’s starting to get the hang of pushing it slowly while walking. In the meantime, it’s fun to bang on and put things in and out of.

Her Boon FrogPod with bathtoys isn’t at all natural, but it fits in the categories of ‘unusual’ and ‘toys’. The FrogPod fits the shower wall and stashes all her bath goodies. Some parents might find a nearly two-foot-tall green plastic frog in their shower to be an eyesore, but our bathroom is yellow rubber ducky -themed, so we’re hardly ones to judge. The bath goods themselves are these non-mildewing foam shapes that stack, float and stick to bathtub and tile walls. She chews on them, slaps them together and pulls them off the walls faster than I can stick them back up.

We prefer wooden toys since the spouse was Waldorf-educated and I’m not fond of over-sized plastic, electronic toys. I wish I could make them myself since they’re crazy expensive, but it’s time-consuming to do properly, so I just try to buy selectively. I generally like Moolka for their selection of natural toys, but from a Waldorf perspective, most of the toys still don’t leave much left for the imagination.

@livesinthetub got her the lovely soft duck below before she was born and with the crinkly material inside, it’s a solid favorite. The little wooden elephant she’s playing with up top is actually one of the spouse-unit’s from when he was a boy. Maybe that’s the charm of natural toys, that they’ll always be endearing to future generations.

Awesome BBQ yesterday! We had something like thirty people out on our tiny little patio. It was baking hot at first, but was much more comfortable once the temperature dropped a bit. My mother was over for the weekend and took charge of the kitchen and the stuff to grill was flavored Southeast Asian by her. Whole spicy ginger pomfrey, coconut calamari, a shrimp & veggie platter, some pre-fab chicken & beef from Trader Joe’s, and lots of really good stuff brought by our guests, like cajun trout, portabella mushroom burgers, and a strawberry trifle to die for.

It turned out to be a really great mix of people, but I was so busy running between the kitchen, the grill and the baby that I didn’t get to chat with everyone as much as I’d have liked. There were some guests that I barely got their names down by the time they left, but the spouse-unit got in more socializing and everyone seemed to go home stuffed and happy, so overall, the afternoon was a hit.

Can’t wait to do the next one!

I’m excited about our upcoming “geek BBQ” this weekend. The idea was to invite all our geeky friends over for a typical BBQ. What’s fun is that lots of them might know one or two others, but are unlikely to know everyone. (Even I don’t know everyone coming!) the other fun bit is that we’ve kept the guest list secret, so our guests won’t know what cool and interesting geeks are showing up until they get here.

Of course, it’s open to families, too, so there should be plenty if non-geeky conversation going on.

I thought about hopping down to San Pedro for some fresh crab to throw on the grill, but my mother talked me into whole grilled fish instead.

We’ll also have garlic potatoes, zucchini, eggplant, corn and yams. I’m not sure about dessert yet, and our guests are bringing even more food! I should get to BevMo today to pick up some beer & wine.

Our house has been dying of clutter for as long as I can remember. The spouse-unit and I came with separate households and over the years, stuff has just accumulated. After several unsuccessful attempts to tackle the disaster in our own, we finally called in professional help.

Our NAPO-certified organizer first came over for an hour to assess the damage. She walked through the house with us, room by room, listening to our hopes (and dreams) and pointing out things that worked and didn’t work. We both liked her and her ideas and methodology, but a major selling point for me was that she had four kids. It was great that she had practical experience organizing a home with kids. She prepared us in advance that, for the size of our humble dwelling, we would have to downsize our stuff by 50%.

So far, it’s been awesome. We’ve done the living room, kitchen, the guest/t.v.-watching room, and the spouse’s office space and while there still stuff to go through, having tossed out so much old junk has been freeing. A lot of it was just getting rid of things that didn’t fit the space we had. (Like half of my yarn!) The spouse had a couple of near-fainting moments from having to part with such cool leftovers as the robotic dinosaur, but recovered quickly enough to fight the tougher battles, like over his numerous multiplying-like-wet-Mogwai network cables. *rolls eyes*

At the end of the day, good organizers don’t come cheap, but since it’s starting to feel like a whole new house and it’s taken us this long to get here, I consider it an investment well made.