We bought this phone for Corban for his birthday. I was hoping it would keep him away from my phone, but somehow he seems to know that mine is still cooler. Well, after he opened it and went crazy pushing the buttons, we discovered that the bottom two buttons played music. Think phone-tone Hot Cross Buns. “I do not want him growing up thinking this is music!” I complained. Enter Engineering Genius Brother. “Really?” he replied. And he took the phone and left. When he came back, he was smiling and those bottom two buttons…didn’t make a sound. Thank you, Tim!

This sweet boom box was given to us as a hand-me-down with hand-me-down batteries (thankfully). Now, this is not the worst music toy out there–it has four “stations” and each station has four different songs it plays. That’s 16 songs total. Not nearly as bad as hearing the same 2 over and over again! But still, it whined and creaked with the lack of juice and was starting to get quite irritating. Until last night. When….it died! When James pronounced the time of death, it was with zero tears and even less grief that I shouted, “Hurray! We made it!” But the Darling Sweetness that we are raising looked at us with such sad eyes, pushing those buttons over and over again. “Uh?” he begged. So James (I could not be part of this resurrection) marched over to the battery tub…and brought it back to life. It’s louder now. But it’s actually on pitch for every song. And Corban sways and jives to his little heart’s content.

Okay, I know you are wondering why in the world I have a photo of a bag clip on a post about toys. This is what I would call “Toy of the Day.” Every day, Corban chooses any item that can fit within his hand while he crawls. Some days it’s Purple Lady (a Little People girl whom we’ve named), some days it’s a glue stick, and some days it’s this bag clip. Of all the amazing, highly developmentally-appropriate toys we’ve gotten him, a bag clip is his toy of choice. Nice, Corban.