Garage Sale!
Well it was a very successful event, mostly thanks to my mom who hit her neighbourhood early.
My plan was to go down there myself early, but Carl ended up working all night (that is, he has just, at 2:45 pm, finished working… since 9 am yesterday morning, with one 40 min nap in between during all those hours, no joke. At all. People think I am exaggerating when I say he is probably literally going to work himself to death or into short term disability, but I’m really not. Yes, doctors, etc., do that too, but… anyway, discussion for another time. He will of course have more work tonight and tomorrow, and be in a meeting at 8 am Mon. ‘Cause this is our life, except every third weekend is lighter in the “things might go wrong” department (no new development, etc.))
Sooooo I had to breakfast Noah and get him dressed and bring him along, so I opted to keep the first part of the morning in our neighbourhood where I was comfortable with him walking alongside me. My neighbourhood was heavy on the sale, but light on the fancy schmancy stuff.
He picked out some things from the piles of minor toys - a Little People schoolbus, some Thomas the Tank Engine books (he is already enamoured of Thomas and recognizes the logo everywhere, argh!), and a toy camera. I also bought along with the bus the Little People Amusement Park or something like that; it has a groovy ramp to push the LP car down and a whirly thing to spin the LP people around in. Later on we bought the LP airplane, so we are really full of LP stuff these days… and I’m still ambivalent about them! But Noah loves them; he loves the way they fit into their things and the way things hook together and the details on the LP, so that sort of trumps things. Plus people keep getting us sets.
The airplane is part of my plan to talk a LOT about planes before we get on one for a four-hr trip. Grand total for all those small toys & about a dozen books: $12
My mother, meanwhile, got all the things I was hoping to get, thanks to cell phones: a sandbox with lid ($2), yes, the turtle one, a ride-on tractor ($2) and a climbing/sliding apparatus of the plastic Little Tykes variety (not exactly that one, but close - it has a top roof on it), which had never been used outdoors ($40). So for $56 we will have outfitted my backyard as well as these other toys, plus sand, although my friend already gave me two bags. So we’re good.
If I had time, particularly with power-tool friendly spouse, I would fashion these things more naturally (I originally had visions of a little zen garden area-cum-sandbox). But this is one of the things I am letting slide in the name of FUN NOW.
I didn’t get some things I wanted to, that I suspect would have been around had we gotten there earlier or gotten to the heart of the Beaches: a wagon, clothes, more books esp. french ones*, and some other stuff. But we did really well all things considered. One thing we couldn’t really do, I found, though, was look for the kind of stuff Lyr wants - little things for the garden, etc. We would have to be without Noah for that I think, ’cause we end up supervising him around the toys, plus it’s just hard to look for everything at once.
I realized that probably as soon as next year, he will be shopping for himself even more than just pointing and saying “Noda (the latest variation on his own name) peas (please).” That was a little mindbending.
I also noticed that the for-sale toys get more broken and lousy the older you get (with some exceptions), until you get into real sports equipment, so it may be that by next year it’s not hugely useful to go around for toy items.
* I have some around and read them to him now and then, mostly when he chooses them. It was still rather shocking the other day when he picked up a fire truck and said “pohmpay” which is Noah-ese for “pompier,” which is fireman (camion de pompier is fire truck). Apparently this language acquisition thing actually works! Who knew!
Comments
Leave a Reply