Hellobee

One of my favorite things to seek out here on Hellobee are gift ideas for kids in my life – including my own! Last year, I shared what I thought Will would love around one year old and now I’m back with what our two year old received for his birthday last month and is LOVING thus far.

A quick preface: Will is VERY into trucks, trains and anything that lets him do things that he sees adults and other kids doing.  His current favorite colors are blue and pink, and he loves books, animals and books about animals.

1) Will is loving this easel so much! We set it up minus the legs so it’s a perfect height for him right now. We’ve set up one side with paper, which I refresh every few days, along with some jumbo size crayons. On the chalkboard side, we laid out some sidewalk-sized chalk and he LOVES drawing rainbows. We haven’t figured out how to help him clean the chalkboard side without getting colorful chalk dust prints everywhere, ha!

2) Oh, if I had a dollar for every time we have had to play ‘yegos’ these last few weeks! Will especially loves the myriad of animals in this set, plus it came with a plane, a ship and a working bridge. Pretty sure our toddler has learned what hippos, icebergs, and zebras are all, directly from playing with these Legos.

3) Thankfully, the family members that gifted Will the Legos above also provided a toy box to store them in! The joy of this one is that it locks, rolls AND it’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! We’ve spent a good afternoon pulling Will around the house on this toy box, plus it’s easy to roll anywhere so we can play on various carpeted areas, or I can bring Will and his Legos into the kitchen if we’re trying to make dinner.

4) At the eve of his birthday party, Will and I came up to his bedroom for our nighttime routine to find a sweet stuffed duck like this one and this lovely book sitting in his chair. Since then, it’s become a staple in our evening book order, and he loves to hold his little duck as we read the book. I love this age and books, especially, because he recognizes the photos such that he knows the gist of what is being said and done on each page – meaning, he reads along with us!

6) We’ve got a major Thomas love happening over here, so when this bath time set showed up behind some colorful paper, Will was SO excited! For a few weeks, he asked to bring the boat and Thomas along with him everywhere, but we’ve kept it to this tub to keep it interesting/special as long as we can (toy fatigue is real!).

5) Our first ball pit! Will is so lucky he got not one, but TWO of these guys – one Mickey Mouse and one Thomas the Tank Engine. We’ve kept Thomas in the box, and we’ll either donate it come Christmas time, or bust it out on a really long, snowy weekend for excitement! This was the hit of his birthday party, though, and he loves crawling inside of it to read books or to ‘clean’ it using tissues. Two year olds!

7) This collection of Pete the Cat stories is hilarious. It seemed a bit over Will’s head at first, but there are three more simplistic stories in the book and he loves them. They tend to have good messages – share! do your best, even if you don’t win! be yourself! – with colorful illustrations and fun cat leading the way. Will loves when we read to him while he eats breakfast, and this is his most requested book since he received it.

8) This birthday brought his very first electronic gift – a Kindle Fire, set up for kid’s Freetime. We’re saving this guy mainly for our cross-world travel later this fall, but we’ve busted it out a few times to help get him used to it, and learn what he likes. He was home sick with us last week and it got a lot of play! He loves the counting and alphabet apps with Elmo, plus the Elmo potty app, and all the train apps, though most require tracing of letters or identifying letter sounds and so go a bit over his head. But the payoff of fun little videos and songs keep him excited and engaged! Now, we just have to get another disc with more GB memory for storing more videos for the long plane rides ahead…

9) Lastly, Mr. M and I gave Will this Schwinn tricycle and while he LOVES it, pedaling still escapes him so it gets about ten minutes of play each week, mainly of one of us pushing him from behind while he steers. (We are getting steering down, though!) It’s a large bike, so we keep it in the laundry room, which definitely gets in the way, but it gets Will excited about trying it out anytime we venture in, which is good! It’s very sturdy and I suspect will be a great fit as he learns to ride through this fall and next spring and summer.

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The only thing I would wish for are more puzzles – Will LOVES the ones that make noise/are interactive with varying locks, etc, so I plan to save up some money and get a few of them for this winter as well!