20100626

Awesome toys for awesome boys

My boy is three! Yee haa! Happy Birthday Tally!

I have spent a wonderful week at home with family, soaking up time with my wife and boy. It shows up how much I miss them, even in the course of a day. We are a very close knit tribe of three and it has been a very rewarding week.

This started, as our new traditions dictate, with the festival of Litha ( mid summer ) and a chance to recognise the passing of the year and enjoy the moment. By marking the astrological intervals of the year I find it both comforting and enhancing to focus on time and not let the year go by. We take a photo each festival and place it on a calendar wall chart. It is good to see our three happy faces squished together in a smile, changing ever so slowly.

The mid summer festival then gives way to a week of activity ( seaside visits, hilly woodsy walks, tasks that we need to attend to or have been waiting to attend to ) before culminating in the birthday of my boy. He is now three and on the cusp of so many revelations, no longer quite a baby boy but not quite little man.

This year his big, favourite gifts were a lovely Ukulele, which he is able to hold properly and twang at with gusto. His love of instruments and music making is a joy to be a part of and I get as much fun as he does. His second big gift was a full sized Woody from Toy Story - not human sized of course, but film realistic, replica quality, deluxe Woody in absolutely film exact detail. I am more in awe of it than he is but he clearly loves it very much already. It is the perfect kind of gift where the quality makes it a work of art but the sentiment behind the film narrative means it is something he should be allowed to play with as he likes. Despite the Disney connection it is one of the few franchises I can buy into next to Studio Ghibli. It makes me want to buy the Buzz film replica too!