The place that must be like the Hellmouth for Rachel Lucas, the black hole of money, Toys-R-Us. The place exasperates me because it should be an extremely useful store and sometimes actually is. That is, when I need a general present for a child and don’t know what I’m going to get yet, usually I can go in there, wander for a little while, and find something suitable. But then the exasperation. If there’s something specific I want, the odds are 99-1 that they won’t have it. Every single time, no matter what the thing is. Stuffed dog that doesn’t shed? No. Take your pick from these three million dogs with obnoxiously shedding fake fur. The one little wooden table and chairs I wanted for the corner of the kitchen for my son to eat at? No. We’re out. Take your pick from these bright flimsy plastic ones. The one specific Thomas engine that my son wanted as a reward for learning to use the potty? No. Take your pick from these four million engines that are the wrong ones.

Speaking of trains, what up, TRU people, that as usual you have a train table out with all the track and little buildings and sheds and trees and train stations on it … and no trains? My broken-hearted son spent the rest of our trip to TRU today wailing because he couldn’t play with the trains as he does on every visit, because for some unfathomable godless reason the TRU people had put none on the table. “Fortunately, baby, we have trains at home.” Wail. “Honey, see the other little boy? He’s not crying and he’s kind of worried about you because you are. Can you buck up a little for Mommy?” Wail. It’s not entirely so much the trains; it’s also that it’s out of routine and he doesn’t yet understand that the world changes. There were trains; now there aren’t. Apocalypse.

And then, the capstone of the TRU Exasperation Experience, the one that puts my steam up every time, I’m herding my wailing son up to the register, hoping for a smooth and quick checkout, and then it comes, The Nunya Question: “May I start with a phone number, please?”

NO YOU MAY NOT HAVE MY PERSONAL PRIVATE PHONE NUMBER, I DO NOT GIVE A DAMN THAT YOU AREN’T GOING TO USE IT FOR ANY OTHER REASON THAN TO MAIL ME COUPONS WHICH ADMITTEDLY ARE A PRETTY GOOD DEAL OR WOULD BE IF I GOT AROUND TO USING THEM IN TIME BUT FORTUNATELY FOR ME I ONLY NEED TO VISIT YOUR STORE ABOUT THREE TIMES A YEAR AND THEY ALWAYS EXPIRE MY PHONE NUMBER IS NUNYA DAMN BUSINESS AND WOULD YOU PLEASE DO YOUR FREAKING JOB AND LET ME GIVE YOU MONEY FOR THESE TOYS SO I CAN GET MY SON CALMED DOWN AND GET THE HELL ON WITH MY DAY.

It’s not the checkers’ fault; they’re only doing what they’ve been told, which, you know, their paycheck kind of depends on. But this is just such an annoying policy on the part of TRU and various other retailers. Sometimes I comply, but honestly, if you see an exasperated person approaching with a wailing four-year-old in tow, don’t you think you’d exercise enough judgment to just check them out and get them on their way?

Of course not. That’s why you’ll be a checker awhile longer, I’m thinking.

This is the second recall of Thomas the Train wooden railway toys we’ve participated in this year. Our recalled items this time are “Toad” car with brake lever, the green maple tree top, and the green signal base. I’m not too fussed about it since The Bean is too old to chew toys, but might as well be safe. Plus, they send you an extra train unit for your trouble in packing stuff up and sending them back. Guess which unit they sent us as a gift for participating in the first recall, earlier this summer?

“Toad” car with brake lever. Can’t wait to see how soon the next gift is recalled.

You haven’t lived until you’ve been ensconced at the kitchen table, where “we” are making the latest craft involving pompoms to come from the Luciferesque minds of the devil editors at Highlights magazine, except it’s really “you” making the craft, because gluing pompoms together requires hot glue, because craft glue or Elmer’s simply won’t hold pompoms together, and hot glue, as we’ve already discovered in the earlier part of the project, does not get cool enough quick enough for a three-year-old to mess with, even only to press the items together after the glue has been spread, as Mommy abjectly apologized for while we hung over the sink rinsing a little finger in cold water, listening to your three-year-old sing, as he blithely plays with his toys while Mommy makes the devil craft,

“The first mate, he got drunk;
he broke in the captain’s bunk [sic];
the con-sta-bull had to come and take him away!
Sheriff John Stone, why don’t you leave me alone?
I – feel – so – broke – up – I – wan – na – go – home.

“Mommy, are you making the frogs right now?”

I was long on the lookout for some really good wooden blocks. You know, the??classic kind??with the letters in colors on two sides and other stuff on the other sides. Specifically, I wanted ones with pictures that matched the letters. These aren’t them.

Unfortunately I didn’t catch the cognitive dissonance of these blocks until I got them home. I let my son play with them for a while anyway, as he was already learning his letters through other means and I didn’t think these blocks would necessarily affect him. Within the last two days I caught him saying something like “A is for duck” (paraphrased because I can’t remember which wrong block he was actually parsing). Blocks are now removed from toy rotation, I’m on the lookout for a new set, and an email has gone to the manufacturer to ask, basically, what they were thinking.

Notice in the link this reviewer:

It doesn’t bother me that the block letters don’t match the subsequent pictures displayed on each cube; I like the freestyle approach.

I trust she will appreciate the freestyle approach just as much when her son’s teacher is sending home notes about his poor reading. But wait, she goes on:

I also don’t plan for him to play with these for the rest of his life; I figure by the time he’s really learning his letters and sounds he’ll have moved on to more challenging toys. So my current expectation for these little blocks is being met.

Her son was one at the time she wrote this. My son is nearly three and still enjoys stacking and knocking down the blocks, has learned his letters, is starting in on the sounds letters make, and was starting to be misled by the “freestyle” approach to phonics. It’s nice that the blocks fulfill her objectives now, but wouldn’t it be a bit nicer if she didn’t have to be on the watch to remove them from the rotation when her son does begin learning his letters? That’s really the question: in a product with both letters and pictures, so ideally suited to link one to the other, why would you put a stumbling block (har!) in the kids’ way by deliberately making letters and pictures not match?

And just for grins, there’s one more wrinkle to the story: a very few of the blocks do have matching pictures and letters, and a few others have letters and pictures that could match if you stretch a bit. The “A” block has an apple (but an “N” and a dog for its other picture-letter set); the “L” block has a leaf (but a “Y” and a pretzel for its other set). The “B” block has a cow, which I can stretch to “bovine,” but the other set is “O” and a pineapple.

But by far my favorite block is the one containing the picture of an elephant. Its letters? “E”–and “R.”