Toys of the month: Johnny Jump-Up

Nicholas loves the Johnny Jump-Up. We have to be super careful when putting him in, but once he's in there he is free to move, and loves to move his legs and spin around. Combined with the "surprise" of seeing a face again, this is amazingly FUN for him. We have these knit argyle socks with little rubbery stuff on the bottom... we call them his spiderman shoes.... we put these on him so he'll stick to the floor. No good to have the little legs going, going, but no traction. With the spiderman shoes, he spins around 360 or more, catches himself, does some dancing, and spins again.

We received this little car (ages 3+) (the ever-critical "M" which makes perfect sense in english, makes no sense in Romaneste, for which the word for months is "luni", so they thought "...'3+', perfect, 3 months); anyway, it has these crazy blinking lights, sings a blaring song endlessly, and spins around and makes little movements... it will absolutely scratch the brain. Nicholas LOVES it. He could watch it for an hour I think. At first I thought, "3+... no way for a 6 month old" (he was 3-4 months when he received it), but the minute we turned it on and he saw it spinning around, blinking, and blaring, he was FASCINATED. Now, I think that along with all the "educational" toys "designed for learning", blah blah blah, a few good old crazy nonsense toys that just blink and flash and carry on and spin around and entertain are good to have around to kind of balance things out and keep things fun.

So combine the Johnny Jump-Up with the Crazy Car, and Nicholas is HAPPY. Nicholas will watch the car, and when the car spins around, Nicholas will spin around sometimes.

These are two toys that work.

Nicholas inspecting the grain on the door

Another toy that works (Hardwood Doors). He's at the stage where he's trying to grab the shapes he sees in the grain on the door.