All Toys Welcome

The Caveman was getting our kids into bed the other night when I heard him say "Stay in bed and settle down, or I'll take your Barbies away."

There is nothing unusual about this ... apart from the fact that he was standing in the doorway of our sons' room when he said it.

That's right ... one of our boys loves Barbie dolls. A room that has long been the domain of Thomas, Lego, Hot Wheels and various types of sporting gear has now been invaded by a group of small shapely blondes.

I've never been too picky about what our kids play with - if our daughter wants to build something with blocks, or race toy cars in the dirt, we're fine with that. If our boys want to wear dresses, or play with dolls or tea sets, that's fine too. The Caveman and I always figured it was better to not set gender-specific rules for them when it came to toys. It often turns out they will gravitate toward the more stereotypical items as they get older anyway; our boys both love construction and our girl went through the usual "Fairies and Princesses" phase that most girls seem to experience at some point.

So, it didn't bother me at all that our five year old got excited about his big sister culling her Barbie doll collection recently. He sat with her while she sorted through them, working out which ones she was happy to let go of, then patiently letting him choose which ones of those he would like to keep. He took his new responsibility as a doll-owner very seriously - when the sorting was done, they even put the Barbies in a tub and gave them a bath.

I have no idea what he plans to do with his new dolls ... he's going through a pretty strong "Star Wars" stage at the moment, so no doubt he will have them swinging lightsabers and using the Force on each other for weeks to come. On the other hand, he might build them some furniture out of Lego, or even have them riding his dinosaurs.

He is a great doll-owner, from my point of view. Unlike his sister, he isn't interested in all the accessories that go along with them, so I don't have to clean up (or trip over) little bits and pieces that have been left on the floor. The Barbies tend to stay naked too - he doesn't care about putting clothes on them, which is pretty much in line with his attitude toward clothing for himself!

He is such a character. I actually got some sneaky photos of him last week, running around in the back yard, in the mud, playing "Star Wars".  He was dressed in only a pair of undies, with a shower cap on his head and brandishing his toy lightsaber at imaginary figures as he went. It was a joy to watch. I do love seeing how kids get caught up in their own imaginations.

Those photos might come in handy in the future too ...

The Keys to my Fridge?

We currently have two cars.  For one of them we have three keys (one for each of us and a spare).  For our other car we have only one set of keys.  We had a second set, which we lost over a year ago and we still haven't got around to replacing.  That situation is changing very soon.

I had to make a mad dash home from the shops today, after discovering that I had two sets of car keys with me - one for the car I had driven to the shops and one for the car I had left at home for the Caveman to drive to his cricket match. That's right, the car with only one set of keys.

Luckily I had finished what I was doing at the shops, so I was able to leave immediately.  Also luckily, it was early enough that he hadn't had to turn the house upside down looking for the keys just yet, but I knew I was pushing it to get there in time.  I drove with visions in my head of my man getting very grumpy because the keys weren't hanging up where they should have been and then conducting a frantic search of each room in the house, getting more panicked by the minute.

I've seen this routine before.

You can imagine my relief when I got home to a very calm husband, who actually laughed when I told him I had the keys he needed.  It turned out I had confused the time he was meant to leave and he hadn't even thought about looking for keys yet!

It reminded me though, of another time we lost the car keys.  We only had one car at the time - you guessed it, that same car with only one set of keys.  I had been shopping for groceries, come home and put the shopping away.  The car wasn't needed again until the next day - again, for cricket.  It wasn't until the Caveman was about to walk out the door to go to his match that we noticed the keys were missing.

Madness ensued .. the whole family got involved, pockets and handbags were checked, we searched the table, benches, bedrooms, under the lounges, on top of the fridge and pantry, even inside the fridge and pantry.  Finally we accepted defeat and a phone call was made to a team mate who arrived, laughing, to give my poor frazzled man a ride to cricket in his car.

I waved goodbye to them as they drove away and went back inside the house to relax.  I figured the keys would turn up once I stopped stressing about where they were - and I was right.  A little while later one of the kids asked me for an apple, which jogged my memory ... a memory of juggling three or four bags of shopping at once as I entered the house the day before (in a hurry, as always) and of absentmindedly throwing my keys into the bag of apples.  Naturally.

It's been a long-running joke in our house, as we get older, that if something is lost you should check in the fridge. All joking aside though, I would have assumed that the missing item would be in plain sight on a shelf. Not this time. I went to the fridge, pulled out the crisper drawer and opened the bag of apples - and there were the car keys.  Well chilled, but otherwise unharmed.

After my sigh of relief came the realisation that I would have to call the Caveman and own up to my mistake ... knowing that he would take pleasure in telling all the other guys in his team.  It took me a while to live down the embarrassment of that day!

It's definitely time to organise that second set of keys.

Guinea Pigs vs Spiders

We got ourselves two more guinea pigs yesterday.  We now have five - all girls (we don't want any surprise babies!).

I didn't think we would do the guinea pig thing with our kids.  They seem to be a common pet among most families at some point, but they never held any interest for me.  I like dogs and cats.  The Caveman and I have also had a few budgies and goldfish along the way .. not to mention the other, more unusual creatures we've allowed our kids to take in.  We have cared for silkworms, various types of lizards, injured birds, a turtle that had wandered away from a creek and more "pet" spiders than I care to remember.

I used to have a phobia about spiders.  The very thought of a spider being in the same room as me would have the hair on the back of my neck standing up.  There was once a huntsman in our bedroom that the Caveman had to remove before I would even consider entering the room.  I stood in the doorway while he was attempting to catch it, with a container and lid, on the opposite wall and I still squealed every time it moved.  The strange thing was, despite my intense fear of them, I didn't like spiders being killed.  I understood that most would prefer to be outside anyway and, as long as that's where they were, they weren't doing me any harm.  Once that spider in the bedroom was released into the garden unharmed, I was happy.

Then there was the time we were driving along in our car and another huntsman crawled along the inside of my car door, right beside my arm. I saw it and completely freaked out, unbuckling my seat belt and launching myself into the Caveman's lap while he was driving!  Not a safe thing to do at all but in the panic of the moment my fear didn't allow a lot of room for sensible thought.  The car was an older style with a bench seat in the front, so scrambling over into the back seat wasn't really practical until we had pulled over and stopped (which my man managed very well, considering I was blocking most of his view).  That spider was also released unharmed, although I was left a little shaken and apologising profusely to a rather grumpy Caveman!

The cure for my phobia came in the form of our first child, now our teenager.  I didn't want to pass on my phobia to him, so I learned to stay very calm if he was nearby when I saw a spider.  As it turned out, he did better than not catching my fear - he actually developed a love for the creatures.  As a toddler he would often come to me saying, "Mummy, look what I found!", only to open up his chubby little hand and show me a spider he'd picked up in the garden.  (Of course, he admits now that he was bitten by quite a few ... it's just lucky they weren't deadly).

Our solution was to buy him a bug catcher - it meant he could catch spiders "hands-free" and keep them for a few days before releasing them.  We would catch moths to drop into the bug catcher for our "pet" to eat and, to my surprise, even I started to find spiders more interesting.

I guess it's true that the best way to overcome your fears is to face them head on.  Through trying not to pass on my phobia and learning more about spiders, I ended up being much more comfortable with them than I ever expected.  I still don't like them in the house but, if I do see one, I don't freak out and I am happy to do the "catch and release" myself (most of the time anyway).

I think, after some of the pets we've had, I can be quite happy with guinea pigs!