Looking back...Less is More.

 Playmobil

Doing some maintenance on my blog I ran across THIS posting from over a year ago. I thought, with the holidays coming up, it'd be nice to do an update on my feelings on this subject.

The Barbies

I believe we're now down to two Barbies -both of which have painted on clothes - and one or two "daughters". These stay in the bathtub for some strange reason. My girls have not suffered Barbie-itis or any other acute fantastical lacking disease because of the absence of her and her perfectly molded brethren. They still get a glossy, starry-eyed gleam over the grotesquely pink aisle in the store but we're cutting down trips there anyway.

Other name branders

The Care Bears, My Little Ponies, Poly Pockets and other silly things have gone to the big toy box in the sky (actually, the one down the street where they re-sell them and I get a tax deduction). The kids have barely even noticed the void.

What we've kept

Dress-ups have been thinned of damaged items and restocked thanks to Halloween. We've added some LeapFrog Tag readers and additional Leapster games. Puzzles and games have taken up a larger residence and you can sometimes find the kids sitting quietly playing together without being prompted and without any required batteries. Thomas, Geotrax, Legos, music instruments, blocks and wooden dolls have all made the cut. Loving Family doll house people, baby dolls, Little People and Playmobil have permanent homes. And books were never on the chopping block.

After all this time, are we where I wanted to be way back two June's ago? Not exactly but we're getting there. We've instituted allowance for chores done (with a smile or at least no back-talk) with which they can purchase new toys. No more fighting me every trip with "I wants" but it makes restriction of what to purchase the new thing for me to fret over. So, we're still learning.

The new item up for discussion is the TV. Mindless, engrossment is really pissing me off. The resulting lack of helping out when asked because they're too glued to the screen which is showing them one of the same four episodes of Wonder Pets really gets me riled up. Add to that, the freak out when it goes off or the back talk from the older kids wanting to watch "just one more show" and it makes for a very angry mama. Solution? We're working on it but for at least this week (and maybe next) we're on computer and TV restriction. No TV, none of the time. I'll post an update on that once we figure out what we're doing.