The Longest Shortest Time

We Can’t Stop: Holiday Edition 2013

Last year, around this time, I wrote up The Longest Shortest Time’s first We Can’t Stop Playing With list. With Thanksgivukah just around the corner, I figured I’d do it a little early this year. As with all of our We Can’t Stop posts, LST gets a small percentage of each Amazon sale if you buy through our links, so in addition to making a small person very happy, you’ll get to make your favorite parenting podcast very happy as well!

I have written extensively on this blog about Sasha’s tendency to scream and scream and scream, particularly if she doesn’t get what she wants right when she wants it, or if I am focusing my attention on something like dinner. The amazing thing about all of the toys on this list is that, if I offer them to her at the right moment, they satisfy her desire to have something she wants (which is usually my participation in her play) AND they are also things that she has begun to use to occupy herself.

First up, Mini Mega Bloks. We got a tub of these from Sasha’s grandparents last year, and they were immediately a big hit. Sasha sat playing with them for longer than I’d ever seen her concentrate on anything before in her life—except, maybe, breastfeeding. The set came with a pamphlet showing suggestions of how to use the blocks, which Sasha refers to as “recipes.” She likes to use the recipes to build houses and animals that resemble the scenes in the pictures. Recently, I have been able to encourage her to create her own buildings, and she often sets out to build the TALLEST TOWER IN THE WORLD! This inevitably results in frustration because the tower falls over when it gets too heavy. But this, too, is learning. Interestingly, the mini blocks have made her more interested in the hand-me-down set of BIG Mega Bloks we’ve had around since she was a baby. These are more suitable for kids under 3, and also come in a pinker version.

One of Sasha’s favorite things to do is take orders and serve fake food. Her latest means toward that end has been Melissa & Doug’s Ice Cream Scoop Set. But her ice cream shop doesn’t serve plain old chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry—no, too boring. She serves flavors like chocolate-gummy-princess-cookie-fudge-with-rainbow-sprinkles. She’ll list you 4 different flavors like that, and then make you choose. No pointing allowed. I have overheard her getting in fights with babysitters because they didn’t repeat the flavor back to her correctly. And then, when you switch places and she becomes the customer, she insists that you also make up flavors that could “never EVER happen.” The scoops and ice creams are magnetized, so they plop into place pretty nicely. This set also has the benefit of coming with 2 scoops and cones, making it perfect for sharing on a playdate or with a sibling.

I discovered this year that matching games can keep Sasha occupied for long stretches of time. We play these kinds of games in many forms. One is the classic card version, like Eeboo’s Life on Earth Matching Game, which we started out using face-up in a heap, matching pairs, and we *just this week* started using face-down as a memory game. (I was shocked she had the patience for it!)

Another way we’ve played the matching-from-a-heap type game is to use Learning Resources’ Jungle Animal Counters. We’ll just dump out the whole tub, and we’ll play what Sasha calls “Animal Families.” There’s 5 of each animal, and she seems to have figured out that it’s time to stop looking for more animals in, say, the leopard family, when she has 5 of them. It’s an easy game to play (and gets easier as the pile dwindles), and then you can make up stories about your animal families once they’re assembled. What happens when a gang of ostriches meets a gang of gorillas? Or . . . what happens when an elephant marries a giraffe? Endless possibilities.

The last kind of matching game we’ve been playing is Animal Dominoes. There are lots of different versions of this game out there, and I can’t seem to find the exact one we have, but it looks a lot like this one from Maple Landmark Woodcraft. Sasha loves taking turns when she plays this (I’m hoping this will rub off on her conversation skills!), and has also started playing it on her own in the kitchen when I’ve got something on the stove. “Does this one work, Mommy?” she’ll ask. A lot of times I think she’s asking me when she knows the dog doesn’t connect to the horse, and that it’s just a way of roping me into the game. But it’s fine with me, as long as she’s not screaming bloody murder.

And, can I just tell you? These dinosaur puzzles from Crocodile Creek completely saved me on Tuesday night. The three puzzles all come together, mixed up in a bucket, and Sasha sat on the floor sorting them into piles, then putting them together on her own—something she couldn’t do a matter of days ago. It was amazing to watch her explore trial and error without too much frustration, and hear her squealing with pride each time she found connecting pieces. She did each puzzle once, then broke them apart and did them ALL AGAIN. This was following a night of massive screaming. It really felt like she was making an effort to show me she was capable of keeping herself occupied!

Bilibo by Moluk. Okay, this thing has been amazing for us. One of Sasha’s big tactics to get me to stop what I’m doing and pay attention to her is to start jumping off of furniture, and from higher and higher steps, making horrendously loud thumps that she knows will send me running, burning food be damned. The Bilibo (turned round-side-up) is the perfect height for jumping safely (but put it on a rug—it will slide on wood). And when Sasha is spinning herself into a dizzy stupor, knocking me dangerously close stove flames, I tell her to get in the Bilibo and spin to her heart’s content. After she’s tired of that, she’ll march around with the thing on her head, looking through the holes, shouting, “Look at me! Look at me, Mommy!” And I tell her I can see her. Even if I can’t. Bilibos come in all sorts of colors, so you’re bound to find your kid’s favorite hue of the moment in there somewhere.

What toys keep your kids engaged? Do you find different ways of using the same toy, depending on whether you’re playing with them, or they’re playing independently?

Disclaimer: Though we do receive a small percentage of any Amazon sales through these links, none of the above companies are our sponsors. All opinions are our own.