About birthday, super-heros and second hand
Monday, Virgile turned 4 years old. But how time can have accelerated so much? I didn’t remembered that kids are delivered at birth with a temporal accelerator that build chain supplied souvenirs. Yesterday, he was my little one lying in my arms, and, today, I have a fearless adventurer ready to board slide swing and trampoline straight away ( have you tried? No best idea to vomit your cream tea ).
Anyway, I surely spent way much time to bring up souvenirs of my accelerator, big day was approaching and I urgently needed to find THE gift that would hit the nail.
Until then, I had under control the PRM ( Playing Resource Managing ) of Virgile’s bedroom, wood and educative toys nicely lined up of the shelves. But my 4 years old kid wanted SUPER-POWER to eradicate any despicable of this planet. Well, any toy that finish in *****MAN is OK.
By the way, do you know that French don’t have any similar expression as “Terrible two”, “Threenager”, “fu*king four”? Maybe we’re just too tired to imagine any expression?
I was quite relieved when Virgile explained me that Octonauts also had terrific super-power. Yippee, I was going to escape, for the moment, to spider like fancy-dressed men throwing dribble settled on my nice shelves.
With my list of wishes – Octonauts, as much Octonauts as possible – I went to my favorite toy shop: le bon coin, French craiglist or gumtree style website. A phone call and a few miles later, I had a bunch of lovely figurines waiting for a second life. I took advantage of a trip to London to complete my purchase in a charity shop, something we unfortunately don’t have in France.
Rather than offering to my adventurer a pack of Octonauts, I used my super-powers of wrapping hero mum to multiply packages ( well, everyone multiply what he can, please don’t judge me ). In the set, I had some Octonauts still in the original package, brightly colored and annoying plastic straps included. I preferred to wrap then my way, so they were ready to play as soon they were unwrapped. Eventually, my little boy had more pleasure to discover his gifts wrapped in several small parcels than open a big package with well-fixed toys. We often feel compelled to buy new stuffs but I think a 4 years old kid don’t make any difference between new and second hand toy. His only criteria is that the toy is interesting.
From baby seat to dive suit passing by legos, I realized most of our toys and baby stuffs are second hand, found on second hand website, by chance on yard sale or in charity shops.
These objects are as beautiful as ones we would have bought new, they pollute less, as they have already been manufactured, cost less – but makes us as much happy. And when we’ll not need them anymore, they can be sold again to start a third life.
By the way, did you noticed I managed to include an educative toy in the bunch?
And you, do you often buy second-hand? Would you offer second-hand toys for a birthday?
This post was written by Daphné
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