A couple years ago, Gabriel used to love coming to investigate the toy shelf I have in my office. Yes, I must confess, I have a toy shelf. These are not the boys' toys, mind you, but mine.
Not that I actually play with them, they are just neat to have, and look at. Mostly, though, the joy in them is when the boys (Maxime first, now Gabriel) would come to see if they could play with them. They always treated them rather gingerly, they being Papa's and all...
Gabriel's favorite was always the robots. The wind-up kind, made of tin, like robots used to be when they were cool.
I keep them in the original boxes, so opening them is part of the fun of it for the boys. Gabriel takes a chair, wheels it over to the shelf, climbs up, and takes his time choosing what he wants to play with. It is almost always the robots. Although I have some really neat cave men, with campfire, trees, and saber-toothed tigers. But he only played with that once.
Back a couple years ago, when we started, I would wind-up the robots with their matching keys, because he couldn't do it. Now, he winds up his robot and I wind up mine. We put them down on the floor at the exact same time, and let them go. It is important to Gabriel that they start at the same time. Otherwise, we have to re-wind the robots to "full", and start over.
Today was the first time in maybe a year that he wanted to play with the toys on my shelf. He is so much more into Maxime's level of games, which is above his "age", that I thought he had left these bookshelf toys behind for good. So it was a doubly special happiness today when he came in and asked if we could play with the robots.
"Papa, you play da robots wid me?"
*Climbing a chair to reach the robots*
*The little froggies in the bubble pond*
*two robots meet*
*the spark-breathing dragon robot*
*two robots and the firedragon*