You know what's a bad gift for an 18 month old? A
stick horse. Oh sure it's cute and fuzzy and makes little clippity-clop and other horsey sounds. David is adorable when he's riding it. (In case you're wondering, yes, I showed him how to ride it. There was lots of ye-hawing and imaginary hat waving. Cousin Marnie would be proud.) And after 30 seconds or so of riding it, the horse becomes a killer sword-club-poker-ninja weapon of death and destruction. I don't so much mind the wild swinging in the middle of the living room. But that leads to whacking toys with stick end. Yep, he's figured out that the stuffed horse head end doesn't do much damage so he flips it upside down - it has better balance that way you know - and whales on anything that stands still long enough. Yes, it's hard on the toys, but it's harder when he turns his attention to me. He thought that was a great game. Mommy makes funny noises when she gets hit with the stick.
Also giving your child a giant stick to play with is like extending his arm by 3 feet or so. He can reach all of the stuff we've put up or blocked off - the end table where we set our drinks, the shelves with breakables on the wall, and the bazillion dollar TV. The stick makes a really cool noise when you just run it along a textured wall too, or along the baby gate, or smack it repeatedly on the wood floor.
Oh yeah, it's an awesome toy! In retrospect, it was a very poor purchasing decision on our part. That's why most of the time poor stick horse is in time-out in the spare room, along with the coffee table that he likes to climb on that used to be in the living room and the rocking chair that he likes to stand up in that used to be in his room. David doesn't quite get the concept of time-outs for himself yet, but he sure does understand getting a toy taken away.
Today was the Halloween parade and party at David's school. As you can see, he is a dragon this year. He hasn't wanted to get into the costume at all. In fact, the first time he saw it, he ran away from it. It's been laying around the house for the last week. He's been giving it the stink eye, but at least he hasn't been running from it. I tried putting it on him Wednesday night, but he freaked out before I even got his legs into it. Today at school it was the same but I managed to wrestle him into it. He was very clingy after I got it on him, and he didn't like the other kids touching his tail. He hollered out, "NOOOOOO!" every time one of them got close. Also, he refused to wear the hat. That is, until the teacher said, "Let's go outside." It was like someone flipped a switch. As you can see from the pictures the hat was fine. The costume was fine. He was happy as a clam.
