Things that go bump and "choo choo" in the night

Every job has it benefits. No not that type of benefits, I mean the perks; the cool stuff. Having a husband who works for an auto repair place we save a lot of money on vehicle maintenance. When I was a child my mom worked for a movie theatre and I got into all movies for free. There's an old family story about how during the war in Scotland my grandma was able to trade away her candy rations for other things because she had a relative who managed a Cadbury plant (By the way, Cadbury's European branch is waaaaaay better than their North American one. But it's recently been sold to Kraft so it doesn't matter. I've read a complaint that said "the same people who make maccaroni and cheese are going to take over cream eggs and flake bars? Are you serious?). My parents volunteer for a thrift shop. The benefit to this is that they get first pick of a lot of "good" stuff. Good in this case refers to Archie comics (yes they still make them), funny hats for our dress up trunk and "the clock."

My Mom picked up a train clock for my boys. Not just any train clock but one that makes LOUD train noises every hour on the hour. It's fun, it's whimsical, I like it. Except for when I'm trying to sleep or hear something. We're having a family dispute about where to put it.

The train reminds me of other odd sound effects I've known. Ok, so I have little boys; I hear A LOT of odd sound effects. But some are more odd or interesting than others.
Everyone has storys of dying toy battery noises. The ones that seem to self activate in the middle of the night. In our house a frantic search to "shut that thing up" usually leads us to a pile of unpacked boxes and random guessing about what one the toy is in. New houses bring their own random noises that you need to find the source of. We traced the last round of flap, thud to the dryer vent being slammed closed in the wind. One time the offender was the neighbors cat that sounded like a crying infant.

Cars make strange noises. My husband the mechanic can diagnose a problem within a few seconds of hearing a sound. Even on cars that we pass on the street. Not all noises are that easy though. Like the time the "seatbelt is not hooked up" alarm went off in our car during a veeeeeery long road trip. It was a blizzard, we were all tense and tired and nothing we could do would shut it up. At least it could have had the decency to be in tune with the Christmas music.

Some sounds need explanations. Like the time my Mom sent a talking doll to a cousin in Australia. Every time you turned the box over the doll cried "Mama!" We had to explain this to the postman.

The postman had to explain something to us once. We lived in a rural area where the local post office was on the main floor of a neighbors house. We got a call one Saturday morning not long before Christmas saying that we needed to come and pick up the mail NOW! I tried to remind them that they weren't open on Saturdays but they told me that in this case they'd open! When I got there the post man made his way to a heavy peice of furnitiure; like a bookcase with a counter, ladden with packages, I had no idea what was going on. What type of package could we be getting? I was very excited as I scanned the piles trying to guess. Our mail wasn't ON the counter, our mail was UNDER that counter. The postman heaved up on one corner and pulled out an envelope that filled the room with noise. It was a musical Christmas card that had become stuck in the on position. The only way to silence it was to put it under something very heavy. I put it in the trunk of my car and laughed all the way home. My Mom was the nostalgic type who never threw out cards not even malfunctioning ones. I'm pretty sure that it came to rest in a desk drawer and for years afterwards we always knew when someone had been in that drawer by the sound of the card.

Korea was full of strange noises. They would probably have been less strange if I had spoken the language but I didn't so until I got used to them I spent most of my time in a state of alarm. The problem is that somehow Koreans have figured out that using a microphone and an amplifier are a great way to market stuff. In the middle of a grocery store you'll find a man with a mic encouraging you to buy produce. (Apparently that's an idea that has caught on here because there's a local grocery store that has sound effects throughout. There's a recording of seagull sounds in the fish department and you can hear chickens as you pick out eggs. Without prewarning this is very stressfull for people with anxiety disorders!) Anyways I hated it........ And if that wasn't bad enough they took the show to the road. Trucks would roll through my neighborhood in the evening with a man and his microphone encouraging me to buy tofu, or socks or whatever. Think of it as the icecream man on steroids selling tofu. There were common noises too that were far too loud. Grandmas chopping vegetables at 6:00 AM. Some combination of their knives and cutting boards made the noise echo throughout the building. Kids with squeakers in their plastic sandles, thumping down the stairs.

Not all the noises were unpleasant though. Walking home in the middle of the afternoon I passed a ground floor appartment and heard music. The tune was familiar but the words weren't. I stood outside the window and hummed along until I found the words. Ahhhhhh a hymm. And the other words were probably prayers. I had stumbled across a ladies bible study. Some noises, like the clock are joyfull (just not at 3:00 AM!)

A toy story

Little Bunny FooFoo turns 3 on Saturday. You know what that means don't you? I get to go toy shopping. Blah!

Toys are a bit of a pain. Toys are a lot of a pain when you step on them. I have a friend who became entangled in one of those wire-bead-maze things and dislocated her elbow. Toys need to be kept organized (just like kids), proper storage is key (just like kids?) they occasionally need to be cleaned (just like kids! Before I had kids I had NO idea that when it comes to buying rubber duckies you want the soft plastic ones that are easy to squeeze the water out of because otherwise the water that gets trapped in there turns nasty). Toys get underfoot (just like kids). Toys need batteries (kids come with their own but you do need to feed them and sometimes that in itself is a chore). You can't let toys overtake your house (kids!).

The problem is that toys are easy to come by. I'm told that back in the day children only got toys twice a year; Christmas and birthdays. Back in the day toys were appreciated. My kids get a new toy about...............? Once a week? Without doing the research I can guess at the reasons. First of all plastics became very cheap; hence dollar stores. Second of all McDonald's did it. Sit in any McDonald's play land and you'll hear the battle cry of all parents "you can't have the toy until you eat!" As a nanny I clearly remember eating at McDonald's when I didn't particularly want to just so my precious charges could complete the set of interactive Tarzan toys. A quick check of my favorite parenting board site shows that there is still a big business in whole sets of McD toys. And then there's the guilt/bribe thing. Yes I have bribed my kids with the promise of a new toy if they do X and yes I have bought them a new toy to quiet my inner guilt about putting them through Y. I once said "Mr. Moose you have A LOT of toys?" His response? "I know Mom, Santa Claus keeps buying them for me." Yeah, yeah, yeah, I hear ya. He can't buy them himself, I've got only myself to blame.

Reasons I hate toys? The "crunch" factor. As in "how much of this toy is going to go "crunch" under my feet? I once looked at a Mr. Potato Head set that had 100 pieces. My Huggyband joked that in our house that would be mashed potato scattered under the couch. Barbie accessories and Polly Pockets were the same way. The key seems to be to containing where a toy is being played with and cleaning it up immediately afterwards. (No duh Cass!) Crayons, games and puzzles must be immediately cleaned up or I'll be finding them in my shoes for weeks. Last Christmas I thought that I wanted to get the boys Lite Brite and then I thought about if I really wanted to spend money on something that was destined to become vacuum cleaner fodder within a week. Good idea just not for now. While big toys take up a lot of space at least they are one piece.

There's also the noise annoyance/obnoxiousness factor. When I first became Little Miss Teen's mom I saw that she had a whole room of toys that needed the batteries replaced. "What type of parent doesn't keep up with batteries?" I thought (give me a break I had been a parent for about 5 seconds.) I marched out and bought all sorts of batteries for all sorts of toys. 2 days later I understood why her parents had let the batteries go dead. See all those toys in the thrift shop that only need their batteries replaced? Take it as a warning, it's not because the parents were too cheap to buy batteries it was because the toy was annoying and once the batteries wore down the parents had an excuse to get rid of it!

The biggest thing is the "will he actually play with this?" factor. Basically, is it interesting? Will he actually play with it for more than a day? No sense taking a 3 year old into a store to see what toys he likes because he will inevitably be interested in ALL toys at his eye level; for about 3 seconds. As all Mom's who got caught up in the Zhu Zhu pet craze will tell you just because a child asks for a toy DOES NOT mean they will play with it for more than an hour either. Toys that especially fall into this category are the "As seen on TV" ones like Bendaroos and Moonsand. Little Bunny FooFoo is asking for: 2 puppy dogs (toy of course), 2 Geotrax (that's good, Mommy likes Geotrax) and big race cars. At least I have it easier than my friend who's son asked for a cloud for his birthday.

So yes we have a high turn over of toys in our house. Most of them come and go from the thrift shop. Like I've said before I consider the 27 cents I spend on a rescue hero as a rental fee. Use it for a few months and then return it. Catch and release. Here it is Valentine's Day and I'm already pitching Christmas toys. Some toys were headed for the bin by Boxing Day like the remote control race car that Mr. Moose broke the antenna off of on Christmas Day. Huggyband assured him that he could fix it. Yes I'm sure he CAN fix it, the question if WHEN can he fix it? There was also a fishing game that was broken on Christmas Day. I think I've already packed up the 2 stuffed cars from the movie "Cars" that I bought at a thrift shop. Turns out that I bought the blue car who happens to be the girl car named Sally (silly Mom, I mean Santa, don't you know anything?. The boys are getting to the age where they are specific about cartoon characters and I guess I must consult a Disney website before I make a purchase.) Anyways, Mr. Moose was devastated that he got the girl car. Bah! who needs stuffed cars anyways? Also turns out that within hours they were using them to hit each other with so back to the thrift shop they go. Easy come, easy go.

What stays? What toys have made the monthly purge cut? Dress up clothes: 2 years ago for Christmas I collected all sorts of dress up pieces; some cool like masks and mouse ears, some common like a cowboy shirts and silly hats. The possibilities are endless. Realism: binoculars, cameras, wallets. Not the kid ones from toy stores just cast offs. Who cares if the camera is the old type that takes film it's just a pretend prop. Cars: I keep the hot wheels even if they do get everywhere, I picked up a cool bin that they are "supposed" to be returned to. The cheapy McDonald/$ store cars go into a backpack that stays in the van and comes out at church or visiting. I figure who cares if we leave accidentally one of them behind? Action figures are good. We also like build a bear stuff. Musical instruments of all sorts get lots of use in this house (despite my dislike for the noise), so do ride on toys (some of ours have miles of them) and balls (downstairs only please and not the tiny rubber ones either).

Turns out that there's an actual toy hall of fame in New York http://www.museumofplay.org/index.html. Toys that have been inducted are basics like alphabet blocks, bikes, dolls, balls, crayons, lego, playdough, teddy bears. Also included are sticks and cardboard boxes. The non toy toys really make me smile because right now my boys are playing baseball with balloons and coat hangers. Yesterday the coat hangers were hockey sticks and my place mats were snow boards.

So I'm off to Toys R Us. If you don't hear from me for a few days you know that I'm still lost in the aisles. On the second hand, judging by what they're playing with now, maybe a quick trip to the home goods section of Target is more in order. Besides I need a new laundry basket/boat/ animal carrier/ race car..........