Cleaning and babyproofing

These boxes hold a power strip and extra cord length to keep things nice and tidy. Especially nice for babies that like to pull power cords from plugs. Now someone needs to create a wall plug cover that keeps cords in place.

Bilingual Baby

Japanese Hiragana Blocks

Elemental Blocks
These blocks from Uncle Goose by Lindenwood come in several different languages (and coming soon in the elements). I always wanted to start early in teaching my kids a second language (or third, or fourth...). Language acquisition is much easier at a young age. And if Doc is going to be a scientist, he better start memorizing the periodic table.

Classic

I remember playing with one of these each time we visited the doctor's office. Even when I was quite a bit older I still enjoyed a good bead maze. Original roller coaster bead maze from One Step Ahead.

Judging books by their cover

While I agree that a book shouldn't necessarily be judged by its cover, I do believe that a book with a spectacular cover (and similar illustrations that follow) increases reading enjoyment by quite a lot. Because Doc enjoys books so much, we've been visiting the library a couple of times each month (not that I need any excuse to visit a library). Since the Barkley branch opened, I've started researching books online first then placing holds to be picked up. Barkley is only big enough to hold a couple thousand books but parking is free and its the closest to us so I keep my 20 item hold list maxed out for convenience. Anyway... I really just wanted to share some of my favorite illustrators:

Leo Lionni

Paul Goble

Gyo Fujikawa

Brian Wildsmith

Charlie Harper

Even more wooden toys

Soopsori is a Korean company that makes wooden toys finished with linseed oil. I would really like to find the block sets from a U.S. retailer. For more immediate use, the rattle set is very nice (available from Emmo Home).

More wooden toys

These are nice for practicing spatial reasoning. The puzzles are from http://www.kidonyc.com/home/ and the huge rainbow stacker is from The Wooden Wagon.

We like wooden toys

These are from http://thewoodenwagon.com/. Wooden toys are usually the best kind but also the most expensive. We like to look at the Plan toys at Yeagers and at Little Tiger Toys on Railroad.

I would like 5 round Hemlock rails for building a tipi; I think 1 15/16" by 10'. This one is courtesy littlefamily.fr.

Things I would like to have...

Full body dress form in size 12 about $500. Of course if I'm going to be making my own clothes I'll also need a serger, steamer, knitting machine, cork top table, etc.