Toys in the Attic

The 'rents were here this weekend. Watching my dad with Millie makes me want to look for the pod (see photo). This is NOT the man I grew up with. Laughing. Smiling. On the floor. He's like that with all his grandchildren. He cannot get enough of them. It's amazing. And, of course, my hambone of a daughter eats the attention up with a spoon. I don't mean to sound like he was a bad father. Quite the contrary. He was outstanding. He spent a lot of time working his arthitic fingers to the bone to make our lives comfortable and make our community a better place to be. He just never struck me as a kid person. My mom is totally a kid person, so it doesn't surprise me that she fawns all over her, but my father has shocked everyone. Time mellows all. My mom...seriously...she is the baby whisperer. You have a kid that won't sleep? Allow me to give you my mother's phone number. Even my daughter, who scares the crap out of my in-laws, will sleep for my mom. Amazing.

It looks like Toys 'R Us threw up in our living room. The colors and sounds are enough to make my head explode. They are all fantastic and stimulating and age-appropriate, but we have an apartment the size of a postcard. She loves them all, though, and it if it were up to us to purchase things for her to play with, she'd have to be content with an oatmeal cylinder and a wooden spoon. We put about half of them in the attic and I "plan" (aka hope and probably never will) to rotate them in and out to keep them fresh. Most of them were passed down by my very generous sister-in-law who has stellar taste. My mom made her a little clutch quilt with the softest fabric. I may take it bed with me instead. Or just carry it around as a fashion accessory to calm my spastic outbreaks. My undergrads would definitely earn a whole new respect for me, I'm just sure of it. If they can disconnect from their iPods long enough and tear themselves away from the campus newspaper crossword for a second. But that's another rant.