Back in the glory days when a toy needed its own planning permission, how I cursed. “Oh be gone Jumperoo”, “how much longer do we have to live with this effing baby gym” I would joke, as I manouvered my post-pregnancy girth around said items.
I long for those days.
Come back Jumperoo – all is forgiven.
Those days meant tidying up was achieved in approximately 2 minutes, with a quick shunt of the item to the side of the lounge and adult space resumed. There were zero expectations your baby would help to tidy obvs, and although bedtimes still felt exhausting, and I was more tired than I have ever been in my life, I look back through my rosey specs thinking about how easy life was back then.
For now we life in a whirlwind of toys. Toys that come with thousands of microscopic pieces designed to cause injury if you tread on them and go missing and don’t come back however hard you click your fingers (Mary Poppins is a liar).
Tie that in with endless requests to your offspring to help with tidying only adds to the pain. Oh and it seems the older they get they don’t want to part with anything. So the toy slurry grows.
Having hit my limit I had a clear up and have rounded up my top five toys that piss me off:
1. Lego
Actually add in Play Mobil. You know that character in the Lego Movie who superglues the sets together. He’s a genius. Those sets get put together once, then it’s a soup of bricks peppering the entire house existing just to fuck me off. Play Mobil too. Bastard tiny miniature cutlery with the campervan. Small tiny torches with the police van. Where are they now? No one knows. The sets aren’t complete and never will be again. It bothers me.
2. McDonald’s/Kinder Toys
I already know I’m killing dolphins with the insane amount of plastic in the sea. The guilt of these makes me feel even worse. Whales – I’m sorry. Sea otters don’t hate me. Plus they’re crap generally and are played with for approximately the length of a Happy Meal then tossed into the mass of toy shite in my lounge. BUT if I get nasty on their ass and bin them, my daughter has a sixth sense for this and I guarantee will ask “where did that red plastic car go from the McDonald’s trip Nana and Grandpa took us on circa August 2017?”. So the guilt of throwing away their stuff adds to my already mental burden.
3. The loft returners
On that note, we have certain items we managed to move to the loft. The cleaner’s stealing trick, so Mr MotherFudger revealed (I didn’t DBS check him when we met). So appaz, you move stuff to another area, then hope the person/child doesn’t notice. Then eventually you can throw it away.
We’ve been caught out and had to bring some items back into play. This castle is one of those things. The thing that pisses me off about it is that I thought we’d moved on, but alas no, and somehow we can never rebuild things like they were before. The castle should be condemned quite frankly as no soldier can stand on it as we can’t figure out how to put it together again. Even Spiderman has given up here – he probably couldn’t even cling to those loose walls.
4. Nerf Guns
My pre-child self said I’d never buy a child a gun. My pre-child self said a lot of things.
We have six.
Have you been fired at by your over-energetic child onto your bare flesh. HAVE YOU? They should require a gun licence. I wish I could blame Trump, but I only have myself to blame… well and Mr MF who suggested we buy the hideous toys.
5. Skinny girl dolls.
Size 0, unachieveable examples of a woman telling my daughter – and son – this is the norm. We know the story here. This isn’t even a feminist issue, this is basic inaccurate physiology (and also oppressive to women).
They piss me off. If I could melt her tits into saggy teabag tits and stick on lard where she needs it to be healthy I would. Actually there’s a Pinterest craft project in this. If only I had the time and didn’t spend most of it picking up Lego bricks from the carpet.
NB: I also have mild hatred for Hama beads, marbles and sets of cards that purely seem to exist for the purpose of being taken out of the packet to throw across the floor.