DIY (sort of) toys

Sometimes....ok, I'm lying, most times when I'm looking for toys for Amani, I'm usually attracted to toys that I enjoyed playing with when I was a little girl and also toys that I wished I had growing up but didn't get because it was too expensive and I was one of those children who would waste an entire week's pocket money on stupid things instead of saving it diligently over the weeks and months to buy the stuff myself.

One thing which I really yearned for was a doll house - a proper one made from wood like the one that one of the girls in my street had and not the 2 empty tissue boxes my Dad cellotaped together and declared a doll house.

So even when Amani was a baby, I started eyeing all the beautiful wooden doll houses in the toy stores. And some things stay the same over the years. They were expensive then and they're even more expensive now. One which I liked the best costs RM300 (what the ????) and of course came without the furniture and accessories and doll family that you have to buy separately. The entire cost of it just made me balk as I'm sure it made my parents balk decades ago...come to think of it, it was probably after coming back from one of those whining trips from the toy store that my dad decided to do the DIY with the tissue boxes.

And so I was thrilled when one of my favourite bloggers, http://www.sweetjuniper.com/ came up with a brilliant DIY dollhouse - http://www.sweet-juniper.com/search/label/Design
(forgive me - I am a techno-bimbo and am too old to start figuring out how to do the linking thingy properly - the fact that I can sort-of blog already makes me feel all-worldly and tech-savvy)

It inspired me to try and make my own doll house for my little girl. Because I lack any carpentry skills whatsoever, unlike Dutch, I couldn't do the woodwork myself so I cheated and bought a cheap wooden shelf from IKEA - the one with the plastic sides that one day I can cut windows out of when Amani gets older and wants to do up the house more.

But the toys inside are all using whatever stuff or toys (toy blocks, doll figures from Playschool's Wheels-of-the-Bus and various McDonalds Happy Meals toys, jelly molds, old boxes, table mat, dish rags) she/we already have about the house which I cellotaped (I am my father's daughter) together to sort of resemble furniture.

And voila, here we have it - Amani's very own non-RM300 doll house:

Little sponges

There are some things that I consciously try to instil in Amani or teach her - say please and thank you, don't be mean to animals (ok, at the moment since she's hardly two years old so the only animal she comes most in contact with is our neighbour's cat so it's more of a "don't pull the cat's tail" kind of lesson for now), love of books (which she does - not so much "reading" it but the rustling of the pages as she flips them), songs & rhymes etc. But other than buying some childrens' books about stories from the Quran and singing "alif, ba, ta" or Raihan songs with her, I haven't really taught - if that is the right word for it - her anything religious-wise because as I said she's not even two, how do I even begin to explain the concept of God to her, so my focus is more on the 'be kind to others and don't you dare throw that toy at that kid' type of lessons. So it was somewhat of a shock the other day when suddenly she stood up in front of me as we were just hanging out in the bedroom and pretended to 'pray' - with sujud, rukuk, siap mulut kumat-kamit lagi. I have no idea where she picked that up other than from just watching her dad or me pray. I just sat there and watched her in awe...and then awe turned into fear. My God, my daughter is a sponge. My God, I have to set a good example for her. Just when I thought I was getting the hang of this parenting thing - the feeding, the changing, the singing of the same nursery song over and over and over again for hours, the keeping of my patience at the tantrums and whinings - it smacks me back in the face saying "Hah - don't even think you've even remotely mastered being a mommy!" and throws me the added pressure of having to be a good role model for my daughter lest I screw up her life forever. Yes, that's one of my greatest fear as a parent - that anything I do or say or not do or say will mess up her life and it will all be my fault.