“Would you be interested in reviewing the BRIO Little Forest Train Set?” asked the folks over at Baby Direct, to which I responded, “But of course.”

It has to be said: Brio rocks!  What’s not to like about a toy manufacturer that has its own Declaration of Independence which states:

There are those who say that you can’t eat out once you have children.
That you’ll never have time to read.
That you can’t travel.
That you’ll never dance on the tables again.
There are those who say that you’ll never wear white.
That you’ll put on a track suit every morning and never buy another pair of stilettos.
There are those who say that the future looks bleak.
We beg to disagree.
We know that it isn’t always easy to juggle family life with work, friends, ball games, shopping and everything else you want to do. But at BRIO, our goal is to make that life easier, fun-filled and joyful.

Any company that says it will assist me in my quest to dance on a table again has my vote.  Oh, that time at B.B. King’s Blues Club, listening to and watching the man himself with a belly full of fried pickles and too much wine.  Ahem, I digress…

This train set represents everything that is great about BRIO and about many of the toys which are conceived and/or manufactured in Scandinavian countries.  Contrary to Bergman films created in the same region, the toys are uncomplicated.  Similar to his films, they are beautiful and require imagination.

Complete with 18 pieces, this starter train set is not overwhelming.  It’s just enough to, well, get started.  Very little effort is required to latch track pieces to one another to make an oval track.  I showed my nearly-three-year-old the photo of the oval track on the box, and he was able to replicate it with ease.  Assembling a figure eight track with bridges, tunnels and ramps is too complicated for my little guy now, but the beauty of this train set is that additional track pieces can be added later.

And the fact that this set is made of sustainable beechwood is appealing.  Wooden toys are generally more durable, and if you’ve seen how my son amuses himself with his playthings, you would know that durability is essential.  More importantly, wooden toys can be a lot safer for children, considering many plastic toys contain toxic substances known to cause damage to the lungs, kidneys, liver and reproductive system, as well as cause perilous hormone changes in children.

Among the non-track pieces are a train, a carriage with three removable logs under an elastic band, and two trees.  The variations with these pieces are endless.  My son took the logs out and pretended they were three people at one point.  He put the trees, dinosaurs, animals, and superheroes on the carriage.  At a later stage, my train was chasing his carriage, and his carriage somehow began to fly off the track and into another room.

This toy leaves room to make believe, to invent, to create, unlike so many things today (read: people disclosing their constant whereabouts on Facebook, reality shows, and the clothing of certain entertainers).  My son has a very active imagination, and I would like it to stay this way for as long as possible.  This train is one small step in making this happen.

The BRIO Little Forest Train Set is available from Baby Direct.

Artwork by Tony Aquino

“Go ahead, share with her, pumpkin,” I told my son as he held his ball while staring at the little girl approaching him, eyeing the ball.  He threw it to her and so began a game of catch between them.  When she left, another tiny tot barely able to walk came along for his turn of tossing the ball back and forth.  As they played, two other kiddos watched, ogling the ball. 

What is it about a ball that seems to connect children, and by extension, their respective parents?  I’ve seen these spheres of magic lead to parental introductions at playgrounds and parks, and they seem to bring together entire countries as witnessed during the recent World Cup matches.  These roundies also seem to serve as peace offerings and aid in reconstruction efforts, through organisations like Operation Soccer Ball and Kick for Nick.

Could the explanation be found in the fact that the sphere and its cousin the circle are considered symbols of unity?  Are there sphere conspirators working behind the scenes to assist in our bonding efforts?  Are all the balls at Toys R Us and Lillywhites singing a chorus of “come together right now over me” when the doors close and the lights go down?

My own brother’s ball games – baseball, football, and basketball – brought our family together, with a slew of relatives coming to the games to cheer him on.  So maybe there was food to entice our attendance – one aunt infamously brought a bag of goodies to each game – and he may have had an attractive teammate or two, but I’m convinced it was the inner-workings of the balls themselves that made us all want to support him. 

My husband’s, son’s and my “ball time” not only gave us family fusing time, but made all of us laugh.  In his room, my son would empty his basket of about twenty balls ranging in size from gumball machine balls to a beach ball.  While I stayed in his room with him to help him pick up the balls and throw them at my husband who stood just outside the doorway, my son would be giggling so much he could barely throw.  Meanwhile, my chuckling ball and chain (get it?) wished he had full-body armour, wondering how he ended up on the receiving end of two future dodge ball champions. 

And let us not forget balls’ cousins, bubbles?  Not until I became a mama did I realise the enchantment of these air in liquid globules.  I’ve seen a two-month-old smile for the first time after setting her eyes on a cluster of bubbles, a six-month-old crawl his inaugural crawl to catch a bubble, and an 18-month-old hyperventilate after catching a glimpse of bubbles.  Even a fellow mom friend of mine goes stir crazy for bubbles – both the fly-in-the-air spheres and the variety from a certain region in France.  I was once blowing bubbles for our precious offspring, and when the munchkins became preoccupied with the next best thing, my friend asked me to keep blowing bubbles because she loved being surrounded by them.  Okey dokey, bubble fetish pal, by all means I’ll keep blowing mini globes of happiness.

Just as disco balls unite Tony Manero wannabes, and circle time unites singing tykes, my own hula hoop endeavours once united neighbours and an ice cream man.  I had a fuchsia hula hoop when I was a child, and I twirled that thing around my waist, neck, wrists and ankles for hours.  I’d invite the neighbours to watch the spectacular hula hoopaganza, and they’d clap with utter amazement at the end of each act.  Sometimes the ice cream man would drive by during the performance and give me a standing ovation, and on one occasion, a free strawberry shortcake ice cream.

Ladies and gentlemen of the world, I’m convinced it’s no coincidence that Cheerios, donuts, bagels, pizzas, pies and cookies are round.  My college roommates and I bonded over pizzas and cookies countless times.  And while I’ve never tasted square donuts or rectangular bagels, I already know that – beyond taste – something would feel disjointed.

Whether a spheres’ and circles’ ability to bring human beings together is something to do with the Sun, Moon, planets or ticking clocks, I don’t know.  And while I’m aware that food, technology and tragedy have their own ways of unifying folks, balls and bubbles seem to have their own ways of connecting the little darlings.  So parents, let’s play ball!

Warning: What you are about to read may contain offensive, albeit honest, content. 

I’ve seen it all over the last three years:  turquoise and black what-looked-to-be-satin bikinis, a strawberry and banana patterned pair which had seen better days (the strawberries were pink, not red), purple G-strings, black mesh thongs, and your good ol’ white cotton variety.

I don’t work at Agent Provocateur or Maidenform.  I am a mom who takes her little one to playgroups and the park, and these panties are what I have observed on fellow moms while seated in a circle during song time or pushing my son on the swings.

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My dad and son in front of:
Doug Wheeler
RM 669, 1969
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

When I was seven, my dad was my light.  My parents divorced, and he and I ended up living in a small apartment.  Our meals alternated between the scrumptious fare on offer at Wienerschnitzel and Winchell’s and while eating chili dogs and chocolate donuts with rainbow sprinkles, we’d listen to Tom Petty, Bob Dylan and Minnie Riperton.    

My dad had a way of knowing how to lift my spirits then, just as he does today, and this often involves an element of art.  While we lived in the aforementioned apartment, my dad enrolled in an art class at a community college.  He came home on one occasion with a sketchbook, and I couldn’t wait to peer inside.  For what seemed like hours, I looked at anatomical drawings comparable to da Vinci’s.  And when he asked me to be his hand, foot, or ear model, I was honoured.  On a separate occasion, he brought home a stack of magazines and asked me to tear out pages of faces I liked.  I handed him my selection and was a privileged eyewitness to my dad’s uncanny awareness of the special relationship between charcoal and white paper.    

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It never occurred to me to not display my son’s masterpieces – and I wholeheartedly believe they are masterpieces – on our walls.  Whenever he creates a new one, I ask him if I can hang it on the wall, and he says, “Tac, tac, tac!”  This is because I tell him I need him to help me pull pieces of White Tac to put on the back of the masterpieces in order to make them stick to the wall.

We are currently visiting family for an extended period of time, and the first things I thought to pack – before clothes, Calpol, blankie, and favourite books and toys – were the masterpieces.  I’m not sure if it was more for me or for him, but I immediately fixed the masterpieces on the walls in my parents’ home.  And when my little guy’s cousins came over, he was so happy to share these drawings, paintings, collages, and sticker, cotton wool, stamp and leaf creations with them.  He introduced each work of genius, excitedly stumbling over his words while describing the contents.  He was so proud, and I was stolzgeschwellt watching and listening to him.

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My name is Lisha, and I am an enabler.  My son has had an addiction for the past two years and shows no signs of overcoming this obsession.  Because he is nearly three years old, one might imagine his addiction involves some sort of sport, imitating animal noises, or having tantrums.  In fact, my munchkin is addicted to stickers.

It all started with a sticker book his grandparents gave him when he was nearly a year old.  Because it had reusable stickers with those wax-like pages, we wore that book out until it had five of its 40 pages and 2 ½ stickers left.  Fearing a sticker meltdown, I bought more stickers and stuck them on the remaining handful of pages as my son slept.   Upon waking up, he went straight to the place he always went – his sticker book.  He opened it up, smiled from ear to ear, and probably wondered how the sticker fairy was capable of performing such a tremendous feat.

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Confession time.  Before I was a mama, I would sometimes “forget” appointments or special events such as engagement parties or birthday dos.  The minority of the time, I truly didn’t remember.  But the other big fat percentage of time, I gave preference to forty winks, a work deadline, or a hot date.

It appears that such behaviour started backfiring once I became pregnant, and to this day, I am being punished for breaking the Thou Shalt Not Pretend to Forget commandment.  I am becoming murky-minded and absent-brained.  Or is it absent-minded and murky-brained? 

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I admit to being somewhat apprehensive when I was next in a queue fashioned to walk through Damien Hirst’s “Mother and Child Divided”. I imagined that the glass tanks would shatter, and I’d be soaked with formaldehyde and smothered by cow and calf organs. Of course, my experience was not this, and to my surprise I had a very emotional response to the work: I cried. I’m not entirely sure why, but such is my intimate relationship with art.  

The effect was similar when I viewed Anish Kapoor’s “Past Present Future” and Berlinde De Bruyckere’s “Schmerzensmann IV”. I was a mess, and no amount of intellectualizing the work could keep the weepies away. And these were pre-mama days. Now, I’m a wailing fool. I took my tiny tot to see Cy Twombly at Tate Modern a couple years ago, and because the flood caused by my tears could not be contained, I was afraid Mr. Todoli would never allow me back on the premises.  

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My husband calls it the Black Hole, and any time I ask him to get the baby wipes or snacks out of my bag, he rolls his eyes, exhales for approximately 42.7 seconds and then says, “You know I won’t find them.”  My friends and family have also taken notice of and commented on the ebony monstrosity, asking if it’s really necessary to carry around enough contents to sustain a small country.

A month ago, the woman at the British Airways counter eyed my bag and asked if I wanted to check it in, and I told her that it was one of my carry-ons.  Her eyes turned as large as a bush baby’s, and I immediately said, “It’s malleable.  It looks big, but actually there’s not much inside, and it squishes down.”  My husband laughed under his breath, while I hoped she wouldn’t ask me to show her just how malleable it was.

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A friend of mine – one of nine children – once told me that the babysitters his parents decided to enlist were a couple hippies who lived down the street.  They made the little ones sing Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin songs while dancing around a pretend campfire.  Following this activity, they’d all sit down, combing and braiding each other’s hair and giving each other fake tattoos.  I told him his remembrances made me want to throw on some bell bottoms and watch Woodstock clips on VH1.

My own walk down babysitter memory lane was a tad different.  My older cousin watched us siblings, and as she microwaved our ice cream because it wouldn’t readily come out of the carton, we listened to Boy George asking if we really wanted to hurt him and Michael Jackson insisting that Billie Jean was not his lover.  Our parents let us rent a scary movie, and as we all viewed it together, my cousin covered her eyes for most of it, asking if we shouldn’t consider a different film.

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