He Found It Today

This joyful face

Do you have a toy in your house that when you bought it you said to yourself "this will be so fun!!"?
The toy that you have since hid in various locations around your house because as it turns out, it is the most obnoxious idea you have ever come up with and cannot fathom what you were thinking as you excitedly watched as the cashier beeped it across the scanner, took it home, snuck upstairs past the kids, wrapped it up and hid it for the special day, and waited with much anticipation as the child unwrapped said gift?
The toy that about 5 minutes after opening, your heart sunk into you slippers because you realized that it is going to bring MASSIVE amounts of joy to your child, but MASSIVE amounts of Tylenol to yourself?

I have that toy.
And today Donovan found it....
And it brought the expected joy to his sweet little face.
Seriously, in the history of man there has not been a bigger smile on a 16 month old little boy. This is because my son LOVES to make noise. And I relish most of his noises with glee. His "mom mom mom's" with his lips sucked in. His cute little tongue sticking out as he blows raspberries. His hysterical laugh. He even makes noise in his sleep, I love how slow and calm his breathing gets. Clapping his hands. Its usually all good. Not this.

What is the toy from the depths of Hades you wonder?

A set of real maraccas.

Yep. You read right. This reasonably intelligent woman, and her husband (if we are placing blame fairly) decided once upon a time that since our kids love music so much we could have a seriously kickin' family band! The new generation Partridge Family! Take a step back Osmonds, because here comes the Marks Family! Von Trapps, you've got nothing on us! This is what we were thinking standing in front of a plethera of instruments shortly before Christmas.

The first 3 minutes Alex and I were the proud parents of our newest band member, 4 minutes a little less, 5 minutes we looked across the sea of crumpled wrapping paper with identical looks of horror. As our vulcan mind connection turned on we realized then what we got ourselves into. Simultaneously I distracted the child with another fun gift while he stealthily snuck the maraccas out of the room.

Today, Donovan found them. And as anticipated he LOVED them. And I smiled hugely at the joy the fantastic noise brought to his face. Then I remembered, how not fun they are after a few minutes. For me. How nothing like these maraccas has ever brought on a headache as fast.

Then he hit me on the head with it..... and it was time for the maraccas to make a mysterious disappearance once again.

Do you have a toy like this?