The Toy Enabler

The kids have toys.

That is an understatement.

My two dear children, Bagel, my daughter who is 4 1/2 and Weaky who is my 2 1/2 year old boy.

Note they have toys from birth, till now. Counting in Christmas’s, Birthdays, Halloween, Easter, Valentines, and every other Happy Meal toy in between.

OH and I forgot to mention that my In laws have an obsessive love for buying my kids toys. (as in more then once a month and we aren’t talking a little toy. We are talking one time Bagel came home with the $80 Dora house, and ALL the sold separately accessories!!) These are just random sleep overs that turn to shopping sprees.

I’ve tried to express to Spaghetti the overload of toys. He says it makes his mom happy to do this for them. Sigh but she doesn’t realize, when she says my house is full of clutter and too much stuff it’s because SHE gave it to them!!

My mom is much less, of a toy junkie. (she gives me ‘necessary’ house hold items I MUST have either from Garage sales, or her house, that seem to not have a home around here… again clutter!!)

Right… so I can also blame myself.

I LOVED toys. I LOVE toys. I have always been a sucker for an awesome toy. ESPECIALLY if it’s a house. OMG. I have a thing for big toy houses. And not so much the doll house kind, more like the castles with trap doors, and mini houses, and fun houses.

Then I would stack them, or turn them on their sides for a different view. Mixing the furniture's, people and animals together.

Funny thing is reading that last line, makes me realize I do that in SO much of my life. I eat by mixing everything, I run my house by ALWAYS moving furniture around. So it only makes sense that I did it as a kid.

Back to my enabling… I have a hard time telling her no with the houses. Now we don’t have the money to buy more, but I do have a love for her playing with them. Right now her room has the 2 foot Belle Castle, the little Snow White house, Cinderella house, a Bunny House (very cool, in a tree!) her Angelina Ballerina house, plus ALL the furniture, and people, plus a few hundred more in ‘organized bins’ in her room. But she has an issue with keeping things as is.

SO I get freaked out frustrated because I can’t even walk on her floor with out stepping on toys, and we TRY to keep up with picking up each day, but you skip 1 day and it might as well have been a week!

Right now our house is going through a HUGE rearrange. We are (finally) turning Spaghetti’s ‘Sports Room’ into the Family Room it should be.

Yes being first married I was blissfully in love, and thought SURE why not let Spaghetti take the BIGGEST room in the house, RIGHT off the kitchen, with the open floor plan and paint it whore house  brick red with black ‘plastic bag’ technique over it.

Toss a full sized pool table in there, gaudy up the walls with a TON of shelves and signed sports memorbilia and yes I won wife of the year award for that.

Long story short on that room, to the point. It’s not being used. At All.

Well right now Lucy the inlaws cat lives in there. And a year ago I brought it up to maybe make it back to a family room, and Spaghetti freaked a bit. Thought I was tossing out all his fancy sports stuff. And got defensive.

I dropped it. Well months later… as in 8 months later. He comes to me and says he wants to sell his pool table. And we can make it into an AWESOME family room. (note I WAS a yes, or no right now answer kind a girl. I’ve learned to let it simmer and he will come to a decission… also 8 months was THE longest I’ve had to wait)

NOW, back to the toys.

So with the Sports Room becoming a Family Room, then that means the basement TV Room will now come upstairs. The Front TV room will become… maybe a library room? Sitting room? Anyway the best room is… the Basement T.V. Room will now become a Toy Room!!

Hooray!!

ALL toys please report to the basement, for mommies sanity!! This should create small wars, since I have a BOY and a GIRL, so mixed toys will either be awesome… or not.

Back to the title (and yes if you know me, I always jump around like this, even in conversation) I enable toys. I enable creativity with them. As much as it drives me nuts, I know these years will FLY by and soon they will be ‘too cool’ for toys.

Till then I will bury us up to our eyeballs in FUN!!

Feisty