What’s Old is New…All Over Again

Do you remember this child?

September 2009. Please forgive the grainy picture. This was from a Blackberry in 2009, when this was considered a good quality camera phone picture. Sad, huh? Let's just consider it "vintage" for the purposes of this post.

Maybe not, but I remember this child.  Sure, she looks happy here, but she would only stay in that exersaucer for approximately 5 minutes before losing her mind.  It would buy me just enough time to consider what we would have for dinner that night, but not enough time to actually make it.  So frustrating.  But now, almost 2 years after the picture above was taken, it’s suddenly the coolest thing in our house.

September 2011

She would spend forever in there if I let her, which I don’t because she is a couple pounds over the official weight limit, but it is tempting.  Somehow she can even get in there herself.  Not sure how that happens, but I find her like this often.   Same kid, same exersaucer, but a totally different attitude.  The difference of course is that the exersaucer now belongs to her sister.  Same goes for the jumperoo:

But of course, only because this little one likes it so much:

Greenleigh loves the swing now, too – something she hated from day one as an infant.  No picture of her in that, I was too busy prying her out of it before it broke.

All of this got me thinking about how much Greenleigh loves other people’s toys.  Perhaps it’s a little jealousy in this particular situation, but there is no doubt that Greenleigh loves other kid’s toys way more than she likes her own.  They are always far more interesting and exciting than her own, even if the other child’s toy is identical to the one we have at our house.  For example, the jumperoo in the pictures above was not my first choice, but they had one just like it at her daycare and she just loved it.  I would pick her up from daycare and she would be in it smiling, laughing, and jumping to her heart’s content.  Based on this glowing endorsement, I was determined to get one for our own home.  It was an older model so they didn’t sell it in stores anymore, and I soon realized that it was going to be difficult to find.  I then scoured the internet for days trying to find that exact jumperoo, because that was the one she liked.  The only one that would do. Words cannot express the excitement I felt when I finally found one.  I brought it home and presented Greenleigh with her new toy, but naturally, once it was in our own house she was no longer interested.  Apparently, there must be something about our front door, because once toys cross the threshold they become boring.

But now that the jumperoo is no longer her’s?  She must play with it everyday.  Of course.