Matthew's Favorites - Vol. I

Since Matthew is still a couple of months away from typing his own blog entries, I’ve decided to take it upon myself to write a couple of random facts about Matthew. I may have to do this in a few installments as I’m apparently somewhat verbose once I get going. Who knew?

Random Factoid #1 – Favorite Toys

Matthew’s top three favorite toys (in no particular order) are: the television remote, a doll that my mom brought back from Ireland, and (drum roll please) one of his plastic spoons. I’ll give you a little bit more detail on each one.

The television remote is the “toy” that first inspired Matthew to develop his “army scooch” several months ago. If I placed it on the floor several feet away from him, he would roll, slide, and drag himself across the room in order to reach it. It has also served as the motivational tool for crawling, climbing the stairs, and staying up way past his bed time. Once he has it in hand, he alternates between pressing random buttons and attempting to fit the entire remote in his mouth. On special occasions, he’ll do both things at once. He can perform similar impressive feats with cell phones, blackberries, or any other small electronic gizmo. As amazing as all this sounds, even more impressive is that he knows when we’re trying to trick him. Jen bought a very snazzy play phone that makes noises, lights up, and talks to you, which effectively enthralled our son for approximately 37 seconds. We even tried getting an old remote for a TV we don’t use anymore so he would be playing with the real deal. No dice. However he figures it out, he knows when he’s got something good in his hands and has no interest in inferior products. Clever kid.

The Irish doll is about 10” tall, is dressed in “cute” green corduroy, and has flaming red yarn hair. Matthew instantly bonded with his new little buddy, and you can imagine my pride as I watch him crawl past his trucks and building blocks to go snuggle his dolly. He will generally go over to it on the floor, and rather than picking it up, he will nuzzle his head into the dolls chest and making some “cooing” sound. He’ll then pick it up and roll around with it as if he’s wrestling. At least that part is manly… sort of. The other day, I was sitting on the floor about 5 feet from the doll with Matthew in between us. He would see me, squawk with excitement, and crawl over to me to sit on my lap. Once on my lap, he would see the doll and take off towards it. Then he would get to the doll, notice that I was close by, and again, excitedly crawl back towards me. This process repeated for a good five minutes, with each trip punctuated by a shrill of surprise as he would notice either the doll or myself. It was hilarious. He never did figure out how to get both objects in the same place.

Finally, the spoon. For whatever reason, a few weeks back Matthew developed a bizarre fascination with one of his plastic spoons. He’ll crawl all over the house with the spoon held tightly in his little fist, and he’ll spend hours practicing trading hands, dropping it and picking it up, and smacking things. He’s even been known to jabber with it from time to time. As long as his spoon is nearby, life is good.

Other honorable mentions on the favorite toys list are: cardboard boxes, the baskets we use to store his toys and diapers, the diapers themselves (dirty or clean), his burp cloths (but only to pull them off of the end table where Jen used to stack them), the fabric strap on his car seat (he loves to suck on it, much to Jen’s disgust and dismay), and the piano pedals. To contradict a common misconception, he does, in fact, have other toys.