*los juguetes

I've been meaning* to write about some of the toys that I would buy [or be given/handed-down :)] again. I have learned along the way the things that capture her attention and the things that just haven't - as cute as some of them are.

So here's a small selection of the toys that Vera loooves and that I would recommend to others:

Wooden ring stacker thing: As simple as this is, she still likes to put it together often. The wood makes such a satisfying sound as it plunks down. The smaller ones also serve as pretend panqueques :) I bought ours at Ikea for $6!

Chicco car shape sorter: This one has held her attention since before she could even army-crawl! First she'd play with the shapes, then she could push the car around, then she'd sort the shapes with my help [I loved it when I first noticed how she'd mimic finding the right slot "no, no, no, no, yes!"], and now she can do it really easily on her own and can identify the colors and stars/circles, etc. My sister handed this one down :)



Tea set: She loves her tea set! I try to remember to keep it put away in her little cupboards or she'd be asking me to fill it with water all day long. She's quite adept at pouring us each a cup now - though it's usually coffee, not tea now that she pours.

Push wagon/stroller: We were going to get her a beautiful Haba one for Christmas, but it didn't work out [gifter please see forthcoming email]. I got her this one at a garage sale for 3$. It's definitely not as cute as the Haba one but, it works great and is used all throughout the day [a little lesson for me in snobbery?].

Dragon push toy: She literally laughed out loud when she first opened this one at Christmas and has continued to play with it since [sometimes Dragon is used more like a baseball bat and is therefore taken away :)]. Both Stella and our neighbors' little guy laugh out loud at him as well - this one is cute and wooden and probably German - and worth it :)

Blocks: while sometimes it seems all they're there for is for her to scatter and knock over, they're still so great and versatile. She started by knocking over our towers, moved on to building small ones of her own and identifying the little pictures. Now she can identify some of the letters and builds them into long trains and even sautees them into soup and 'cake' [not muffins, mind you].

[on a similar note, as cute as soft blocks are, they didn't get as much play as I thought they would have.]

*meaning to write about this for a long time. in fact we've lost the contents on two laptops while I gathered pictures for this post! so I just gave some links...