What decade is your nursery?

So, as we wait (and wait and wait and wait) to find out who our kid/s will be, we are also waiting (and waiting and waiting and waiting) to do any major shopping. Since we don't know if we'll need one or two cribs etc., we have refrained from buying any of the big necessary items. This means The Esquire has a lot of pent up shopping urges that he has to channel somewhere. Unfortunately (depending on how you look at it I suppose), he has recently discovered the eBay app for his iPhone.

For months now, almost every day another package from some random person has shown up on our doorstep. And just what has he been bidding on you ask?

Read-Along-Books & Records. Yes, RECORDS. Did you have these as a kid? I had a whole collection of albums that had 4 or 5 page books in the record cover so you could listen to the story as you followed along in the book. I loved them. And The Esq also remembers these Read Along Records fondly, so slowly he has been buying them on eBay. His plan is to download the records onto our iPod so our kids can Read-Along while we take road trips.

This is the first one he bought and I admit, it was kinda cool.

But now we have ALLLLLL these!

(click on the picture for a better view of the titles... yes, there appears to be a story titled 'A Rocket in My Pocket.' No comments please)

But we don't just own 45's, we also own all of these! It turns out Carol Channing is well represented in the Read Along Records industry...

I didn't say anything about his Read Along obsession until this one arrived....

Mr T and the Mystery of the Mind Thieves. Narrated by Mr. T himself, he stars as the driver for a team of traveling gymnasts who solve mysteries as they go. FYI: there are 4 more in the series of Mr T books out there...

The bookshelf in the nursery-to-be was slowly filling up with vinyl so I thought it best to channel his eBay obsession into something our future child/ren might actually be able to enjoy (have I mentioned we don't own a record player?). I told him about all my favorite childhood Fisher-Price toys.

Four days later this arrived in the mail:

You know you recognize it...it's the Fisher-Price Jumbo Jet, with the old-school wooden-bodied people. Ok, so the suitcase handles have teeth marks in them, whatever, I disinfected everything and it's all ready to be played with!

A week or so later we went to the Rose Bowl Flea Market to look for rocking chairs (ugh! more on that futile search some other time). We had been there for about an hour when we found the Toy Lady. Spread out on the pavement were bins and bins full of old toys: Weeble Wobbles, Legos, Star Wars figurines, Smurfs, and FISHER-PRICE LITTLE PEOPLE! I picked out some cars, a tractor and about 6 people included this little guy

How cute is he! He's the first Black Fisher-Price Little Person I've ever seen. The people around us couldn't understand why we were so giddy to have found him...but to us it felt like a sign of some kind!

While I was sorting through the bin 'o people, The Esq was haggling with the Toy Lady over the price of a Fisher-Price Tudor Dollhouse. He won, so he spent the rest of the afternoon wondering around the Flea Market with his new house...
EVERY. SINGLE. PERSON. who walked past us commented on the house. Moms, children, grandmothers, gay men... everyone had something to say about the The Esq and his Tudor. One funny lady asked if that was all the house we could afford in today's market.

So now in addition to our Jumbo Jet, we have a home and a family

Luckily there is some painted-on furniture inside the house because so far our little family does not have any of the 3-d kind. Sadly, all of the furniture sets we have found on eBay cost more than the Jumbo Jet! It's crazy times when a chair costs more than a plane! That's a recession for you I guess... Don't you love the big cauldron painted in the kitchen fireplace?

Even though I was pleased with our Tudor and the jet and our cute little black boy I still told the Esquire to stop, we don't need any more vintage Fisher-Price. He fought back...he wanted to try to find the school bus and the camper and maybe even the A-Frame (so they could have a second home with no furniture?).

"What about our agreement to limit the amount of plastic toys in our children's lives," I asked, "as cool as they are, these toys are all plastic!"

His lawyerly response: "These toys are from the late 70's... they are all grandfathered in."

Oh, and his other argument for wanting our children to only play with vintage toys? Because --and I quote--he doesn't want our children to know what decade they live in. Sigh. I think he's kidding... but you never know. Finally, though, he agreed to stop bidding on eBay.

And then last week. Out of the blue (to me) another little package arrived. I got a little (perhaps irrationally) angry with The Esq. "You said you had stopped!" He gave me a sly grin, "Open it."



He had found 4 more Black Little People! And a Dog! How could I stay mad when he found role models and friends for our Rose Bowl Black Boy. Aren't they great! I think they are from the Sesame Street collection (doesn't that look like Gordan and Susan in the middle?).

So now we have a whole village

All just standing around (they don't have any place to sit), here in Little Ethiopia, waiting on our Little Ethiopian(s) to come play with them.

xoxo-Kat