Please note: If I give your kid a drum set, it doesn't mean I hate you
You know you're giving bad gifts to kids when the parents donate them to the church shortly after their kid's birthday. Pre-parenthood, this happened to Chris and me... twice. We once bought a drum set for a one year old. We thought it was so cool that we bought the same drum set for a different one year old. Lo and behold, both of these drum sets ended up being given away. Oops.
Now that we've spawned (and spawned again), have we realized our mistake? No, friends, no we have not. We are slowly building up an arsenal of raucous things for Jude and his sister to bang on. My house in the afternoon sounds like what I imagine The Polypohic Spree would sound like if everyone in the band were... you know... uncoordinated toddlers.
Yet I still detest toys that take batteries or plastic toys with blinking lights, and I have no plans to ever let Jude tinker around on my phone or iPad (but ask me again after our trip to Florida! Ha!). However, I love watching Jude strum his ukelele and shake his maracas, or even use his maracas to bang on the ukelele. We recently got him a glockenspiel, and I swear could listen to him bang on that all day. I was able to record part of his first meeting with his little xylophone. He can't play "Don't Stop Believing" yet, but give him a couple months:
So do musical instruments make good gifts for toddlers? I suppose it depends on the parents, but in this household, a drum set would never be frowned upon... at least between the hours of 8am and 7pm.
Since I'm in full-on collage mode (see yesterday), here's some other instruments that are great for toddlers:
Jude has the bee maracas (1), the glockenspiel (2), and the ukelele (3). All the others are on my wish list.
1 // 2 // 3 // 4 // 5 // 6 // 7 // 8
