Parental Toys

Sometime after the Toys"R"us adventure, Arny and I discussed the whole subject of toys and decided we would only buy for our child what we would want to play with. Not what we would have wanted to play with when we were one year old, but what we would play with now. Hence the Fisher Price alphabet blocks listed on our baby registry. Those things are so cool..I digress.

Shortly after that, we received the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog, a cornucopia of adult toys, and we both found things we wanted - me, a race track, with little tiny Formula One cars and over 35 feet of track, and him, a flying remote control helicopter. Instant Christmas presents!!! Yes, we decided those would be our Christmas presents to each other. Except, my birthday happens to be December 12th (for all of you who knew and forgot, shame....) and Arny was so excited about the race track, he decided to buy it for my birthday present instead.

It is now set up and taking up our entire living room area - we have to step through and around it to get anywhere, but we are having loads of fun. It is a real test of the stability of one's marriage to jointly put together a track with 5 zillion pieces and not kill each other:

"Honey, pass me an "e" piece?"
"sure sweetie, just tell me which is the "e" piece"
"it's like the "d" piece, but shorter"
"ok, but what does the "d" piece look like"
"it's right there on the instructions"
"they look the same to me"
"here, use this one"
"are you sure this is the right piece"
"close enough"

Ok, so we had to put it together twice, but it works. But alas, it will only stay up until we leave to bring home the baby. Why, you ask? Because, silly us, we forgot about the choking hazard present with something that has 5 zillion pieces - some of which are quite small. Poo!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Perhaps I'll have to go out and get those alphabet blocks a little early....