Oh, my gosh, these things are annoying!

The other day, I spent 30 minutes building the crane thing. Elijah had made it through steps one and two but couldn’t get any further so at his insistence, I took over. The building of the thing was frustrating enough but then I handed the finished product to him and within two minutes he had busted it. He insisted on putting the tracks on the wheels and that just made the whole thing fall apart. So then I spent another 15 minutes fixing it. And within five more minutes? Busted again. Build it yourself! I have declared I’m finished.

But the reason these things are of the devil? The same reason they fall apart. First of all, they don’t fit well. Then they are warped or something and so they peel off from one another anyway. Supposedly they fit “other standard blocks” (ie Legos) so I guess that’s something but I would almost stand to say they would have the same effect with other blocks. They’re incredibly hard to snap together.

Maybe when he’s older I wouldn’t mind getting him a set of K’NEX that are just the connectors and things, none of those stupid blocks, but in the mean time, I’m boycotting these things… before I lose my mind! Ahhh, thankfully, however, he can build the tractor and one other smaller/easier item himself. At least that’s something, even if it doesn’t stay together but for a few minutes.

It’s by Leap Frog and it’s called a Word Whammer. There are 3 settings: letter hunt, word builder, and word hunt. The letter hunt setting will say the letters that are put in and what sounds they make and if a word is spelled, it will say the word, too. On word builder, the object is for the child to put in three letters that form a word. The Word Whammer will say all the sounds then the word that was spelled. And on the word hunt setting, it will say something like, “let’s spell the word ‘cat,’” and the child is supposed to try and spell it. If they don’t get the letters in there after a few seconds, they get a hint, like, “the letter ‘t’ sounds like ‘tuh’” or “the letter ‘a’ is red.”

It’s been a great learning activity for Elijah and keeps him quite busy from time to time. He likes to spell the same words over and over, though. This is because there are some “favorite” words of the Whammer (like cat, dog, pig, mom, dad, etc.) that get an extra sound byte. But for all his sounds, it’s helped him get some of them straight, though with the word hunt, sometimes he has a hard time distinguishing between the letters t, g, p, b, etc., that sound the same when you say just the letter. It’s kinda funny sometimes, though, because we’ll hear him in there yelling at it, saying, “I’m looking for it!!” or “I can’t find it!” or “I KNOW!” or “WHAT!?”

We’ve also seen that, uh, it ignores some words. Like “sex” or other three letter words you might be able to come up with. If you plug them in, it doesn’t even ask you to press the letters to hear the word you spelled. Cracks me up. It does know “God” though, pronounces it funny, but it knows it! (Well, “knows,” is programmed, whatever.)

Another thing that’s nice is rhyming. I’m not sure when it decides to do this, if it’s for certain words or just randomly or what, but sometimes it will ask you to remove the first letter and replace it with another to do a rhyming sound. Once, I think Elijah had “bit” or something in there and it told him to rhyme so he replaced the “b” with an “a” which, of course, isn’t a word. The Whammer just went “that’s a funny sound!” But then, of course, we could explore “lit,” “mit,” “hit,” “pit,” etc.

So I just thought I’d share that, this isn’t a sponsored post or anything. I’d seen my friends have the single letter magnet thing by Leap Frog before, but this thing is so much better. And I think Elijah’s the type that learns better with the interactive activities, maybe, so, yeah, it’s been good for us. So I skipped a lot of his learning-to-read book and now he’s working on sounding out three letter words.

The other day, Elijah found this for us again and we got Googling to find out more about Tootsie Toys.  This is a Classic MG, all metal except the wheels.  I wonder what it would take to restore it?

We found some others in perfect condition, like this one. Who knows, I don’t know much of anything about antique toys and collectibles.

But we thought that was kinda cool.  Unfortunately, I am unable to find much of anything about this particular model and have no idea exactly how old it is.  So if ya know… let me know :)

Only… I’m a bit confused. I’m not sure what is what and what goes with what and what’s the best. Anyone have experience with these and can give me some pointers?

Not to mention these things are more expensive than I’d expected! I was at the store yesterday and almost fell over when I saw the Vtechs for $90 and the Leapsters for $60, I had expected about $40, honestly.

So I’m looking on amazon.com now and this is really strange, check this out:
Leapster L-Max for $79.99!
Leapster L-Max in pink for $67.49!
What’s up with that!?

Man I had no idea this thing was going to end up being as bad as a Playstation or other game console. The cartridges look like they’re $30 each, too. :|

Okay, so that’s not totally true. Mommy does have a Jeep, but Daddy pays for it. Daddy doesn’t have a Jeep, he has a currently-broken-down 1987 Toyota 4-Runner that Elijah thinks is a Jeep… but it’s true that Elijah has a Jeep now!

We brought it home and it charged for a couple of hours and they ran out to play quickly before it got dark.

Of course… it soon ran out of battery power…

He wasn’t too happy with the concept of the battery charging and threw quite a fit when we plugged it in (in the garage) and came inside. But today, I think he’s resolved to the fact that he won’t be riding it for a while. He’s not feeling good today. :( Out of the two and a half hours he’s been up (got up late, at 9.30!), he’s spent 98% of that lying on the couch watching tv and whining. Poor little guy! Hopefully the weather will stay nice and when he’s feeling better he can go out and play with his Jeep again!

I ended up buying all of these:

The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man’s Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945

The Nazi Officer’s Wife : How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust

The Girl in the Red Coat

Too Big for Diapers

The next time I complain about our credit card bill, you guys remind me that it’s my own fault. Our own fault.

Anyway, has anyone read any of these books? The potty training one aside, of course. My mom seems to think E’s ready for training. I don’t know myself, but I’ve also never potty trained a kid before.

But speaking of buying things, remember the thing on Ebay? Well, I did win the auction and it arrived the other day.

It’s smaller than I remembered these things being. But maybe that’s because I’m a heck of a lot bigger than I used to be. We had it out in the living room and E found it, much before his birthday, of course. He seems to think that the pliers are for pinching one’s nose, thanks to Steve who did that to him first thing. He also refuses to use the hammer on the nails but tries to hit the dog instead, then laughs hilariously. Either way, he’s interested in it, so I’m happy.