Toy Mountain

I conceded defeat this weekend, as it finally happened.

The toys took over the house.

At our old house on Jackman Terrace, when Maymuna was just a baby (and her toys were of similar stature) we had a designated play space where all her toys lived and where she played with them. It was adjacent to the kitchen and the living room for perfect monitoring. And the rest of the house remained the domain of grown-ups.

I have tried the same approach here, with the main floor bedroom doubling as the playroom and just about every toy we own had its (somewhat cramped) place in there. Of course I had not factored in the quadruple whammy of this past fall/winter which consisted of one birthday, 2 Eids and Christmas. This has pushed the room to its full capacity. Lest Maymuna drown under piles of adorable stuffed monkeys and dress-up clothes, we thought we would have to expand the play area to include... well, the rest of the house.

The other pressing reason for this re-organization is related to the girls' very different types of play. Maymuna is three now and wants to play with more sophisticated toys with inevitably smaller parts; while Hafsa wants to (A) be wherever Maymuna is, and (B) eat anything smaller than a golf ball. Though maybe she would try to eat one of those too. I don't remember having to pin Maymuna down and pry something out of her little jaws more than a couple of times in her babyhood - I do this with Hafsa several times *daily*.

Needless to say, Maymuna needs a play space that's private sometimes, but shutting Hafsa out of the playroom leaves her with nothing at all to do because all the toys are in there. So after lots of debate we moved our much loved Crate & Barrel shelving to the dining room (sob!!) and brought some of the larger toys out into the living room (a once toy-free zone!!) and therefore given Maymuna some "big girl" space in her room for elaborate doll pinics and tea parties.





Speaking of kiddies, I just know that the grandparents reading are appalled - there have been no new pictures of the children up on the blog in ages. Well, Nan, Datti, Grandad and Dada... you've been very patient... these are for you...















Hafsa can walk when pushing the toy grocery cart, so it's her new favourite thing. That open-mouth grin in the last picture of her, that's the smile she puts on every time the camera comes out. Here's a better shot of it:



It's 10 o'clock now people, I've got to head straight to bed, preschool in the morning! Sweet dreams!