Dear Santa...

Auntie Jas asked me the other day whether we had any good ideas for Christmas gifts for Cole. Do I ever! Aside from boxes and crunkly paper, which is what he probably will enjoy the most! There are so many wonderful toys out there that we can't wait to play Santa for Cole.

I have a folder on my taskbar marked "things to buy." It's full of cool things for Cole that I've seen here and there on the good old Interweb, saved so that I won't have search around, let alone try to remember what I thought was so cool way back when in my sleepless delerium... It's nestled right between my "things to make" folder, which is full of craft & sewing projects I will make some time in the next thousand years, and the well-visited "Randi's news" folder, which contains links to my favourite actual news sites and trashy gossip.

Mostly it's full of cool wooden toys. I'm on a real wooden toys kick. I prefer wood to plastic - they're more safe, more durable and heck - way cooler. We're hoping to buy some more musical toys too, and I always have a saved shopping cart on the go at Amazon. I'm trying to avoid stuff made in China, whatever it's made out of, just because of the safety issues. Jamie and I have a thing against commercial cartoon characters, so we stay clear of anything branded. We're doing pretty good, with the exception of a Spongebob doll that Jamie bought a while back and Cole enjoys (possibly due to the tragic Tiny Tim style song I sing when I make him dance?). We have so many stuffed toys that for now that we are running out of places for them and Jamie has said more are verboten...

Rather than write a bunch of posts to share all these cool ideas - until I buy some of them, that is - I'm adding a new sidebar. Dear Santa.... If you're stumped for a baby gift for that special baby in your life maybe these ideas will help? And yay - most of them you can buy without leaving your chair! This is great for me because of my often moaned about lack of time, general laziness and love of packages in the mail. Here are a few of my favourites:

Cheekeyes wooden figures polar set

Any wooden blocks from Haba, in both fun colours and untreated wood or crazy wooden knob blocks

Awesome wooden montessori animal puzzles

Puzzle pairs simple matching games

Wooden drum from Plan Toys