Thursday, March 12, 2015

Alona cried.

Hi Chip we will call you tonight. When is a good time? Alona cried when we finally discovered it was not a miss-sent order but a gift from a loving family member who cares about her kids to send us something educational and fun for them.
Touch'n innit.

I like making ladies cry. He's talking about Snap Circuit Alternative Energy. That was an impulse purchase.

I intended to do a post about the liveliness of households, how impressively filled with life some households. The idea arose from watching Snap Circuit videos. All of them turn out to be children playing. And playing very well indeed. One of the videos I cringed when the boy cracked his knuckles before starting off. And loudly too. I stopped the video right there. I remembered doing that at his age. Why did we boys do that? I remember my mother objecting strenuously, demanding I knock it off, but it had already become a thing among us. I cracked my own knuckles again. It hurts. They don't make a sound. It's stupid. Re-started the video. The boy continued showing his little brother how to assemble his toy involving circuitry. The little one comes and goes. His mum is seen through a doorway going back and forth in the background, she calls to him here and there while she's doing chores and as he assembles and makes the video,  and he answers her while tenderly instructing his little brother through appearances. The dog comes by. The cat is seen in the back. A pet bird squawks loudly. The whole house is overflowing with sound and light and life. You think you can smell the place. That is the household this woman created and I am impressed.

By contrast my own household is more like a buddhist temple.

But I cannot find the video anymore. But by looking I did see a lot of kids playing with these toys and all playing so well with them, entirely wrapped up with them. Then I thought, hey, Jim's kids are nearly this age, and they're only this age once. Surprisingly, the toy was only 50 bucks down from 75. The hard part, and this is really hard, picking out which Snap Circuit set to get the boys. Any one of the kits would work. I went for the most childish and universal of all the sets available because the boys are so young.

No birthday. No Christmas, just give it to them. Now. Before they're too old for it.

Bonus: Alona cried. \o/

6 comments:

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

A thoughtful gift.

That's nice.

A perfect moment had.

ricpic said...

In my opinion households are helplessly lively or helplessly without a pulse. I say helplessly because neither quality can be forced on a household. It's in the nature of the parents and children in each household. And that nature can, I suppose, be tampered with but not permanently changed. The rubber band can be stretched but snaps back.

Plus, there's a complicating factor. Some households are not particularly active in the obvious sense but contain a fair amount of internal or quiet activity. Such as, to use a high-blown phrase, the life of the mind.

vza said...

Great gift, Chip!
I bought several sets of Snap Circuits for my 4th graders to play with during their free time. They loved the activities. Highly recommend!

rcocean said...

Touching story.

JAL said...

My sister gave one to my grandson (her nephew). He is only 4 but darn bright and he worked on it with his dad. (His mom is good for that to.)

Auntie sent a bottle of wine along to help.

MamaM said...

The dog comes by. The cat is seen in the back. A pet bird squawks loudly. The whole house is overflowing with sound and light and life. You think you can smell the place. That is the household this woman created and I am impressed.

Same with blogs.