Be sure to leave your Wordless Wednesday link in the linky below.

Image processed with Instagram for iPhone 4.

Check out Dear Crissy & The Divine Miss Mommy for more Wordless Wednesday linky goodness!

If you have a WW post this week, make sure you sign up with the linky!

Image taken with Instagram on the iPhone 4.

Check out Dear Crissy & The Divine Miss Mommy for more Wordless Wednesday linky goodness!

Enter B. Toys, an amazing modern toy company.

Just B. Just You. B. You.

That’s B. Toys’ motto. Encouraging each child to celebrate their uniqueness and be themselves, all the while exploring their world and to fully enjoying every moment as children. That’s just one reason why I love B. Toys. They’re one of my favorite toy companies that I’ve come across thus far as a mom, and as long as they keep coming out with Toys, we’ll keep buying them.

Each toy that we’ve purchased from them has been uniquely amazing so far, everything is beautifully designed, and their branding is fun, beautiful and captivating! Their packaging reminds you to recycle, and some of the boxes serve a dual purpose and can be taken off and turned around for an instant gift box. Brilliant, right? Some B. Toys may look familiar to you, and that’s because they used to make toys under the Parents’ brand. In fact, Zachary has a couple of their toys with the old branding, and I was impressed then at the great quality of the product. But their new look is awesome, and truly designed with children in mind!

Not only is B. Toys good to the Earth, but they strive to do more. They donate 10 cents from the purchase of each toy to Free the Children, a charity designed to free children from poverty.

Zachary and I have a few favorite B. Toys – we started with the Hellophone. It’s recordable, so every time Zachary presses one of the buttons, he hears me say, “Mommy loves you!” It makes him smile, which makes me smile. Soon after came the Toulouse Lap-trec, a “neverending sketchpad” with magnetic animal stamps. Little Z loves to draw so this toy was a hit! Another B. Toy we love is their FunKeys, which makes 4 different car sounds and has a little flashlight that Zachary likes to turn on. He also likes using it to pretend to unlock our front door. Clever, isn’t he? :)

–

I am very excited to have been given the opportunity to review B. Toys Spinaroos and Stackadoos. These are the B. Toys version of Bristle Blocks, yes, the kind you may have played with when you were a kid. But… they are different. They are special.

Look at how colorful this bin of blocks is? (yes, the Spinadoos come in a big orange storage bin – way cool!) There are all kinds of different pieces in there which you can build anything you can think up. Their toys lend SO much to the imagination. It’s pretty amazing!

In my orange bin, I have both the Stackadoos and Spinaroos stuffed in there, and it’s practically overflowing!  There are so many different pieces that come with each set.

The Stackadoos are the more basic set which lets your child use his or her imagination to build whatever structures you can dream up, in any color of the rainbow. The set comes with a reusable bag, but I put all of ours in the bin with our Spinaroos.

The Spinaroos takes that one step further with spinning structures to stack on to, crazy shapes and faces, and even more bristle blocks! You can get either one, or both of them, but having both is twice the fun! And I really love all the different spinning shapes included in the Spinaroos!

The sets come with a pretty little guide book with designs and ideas for building your own creations. I tried some of those with Zachary but he definitely preferred to pick and choose his favorite pieces and make something up on his own. I loved seeing that side of him since other block sets we have are very standard, while the B. Toys bristle blocks are so unique and colorful and have very different shapes compared to “regular blocks” – it was truly fun playing with him and helping him figure out how to put his own design together.

I definitely helped Zachary put this together, but the blocks are easy enough to use that his little fingers had no problem grasping them and connecting them to other blocks. Can you see the look of concentration on his face? He was REALLY into playing with this toy, and after I stopped taking photos, we had a great time building more structures up, tearing them down, and then doing it all over again. I really like the Bristle Blocks that B. Toys has designed because they are engaging, exciting, aesthetically pleasing, and they are a toy that can be used over and over again in many different ways, which is really important when you have a toddler. Bristle Blocks were some of my very favorite toys growing up, and I hope that Zachary treasures his Stackadoos and Spinaroos as much as I loved my toys as a child – and as much as I love these amazing and unique toys from B. Toys!

I have a feeling we’ll soon be buying B.’s brand new set, the Bristle Block Thing-a-ma-JIG’s, which include duck feet, flowers, funny faces, and even more to add to your bristle block sculptures!

I’d love it if you checked out their website (which is amazing – very interactive – and beautiful!), and followed B. Toys on Facebook as well as Twitter. They are always posting about something inspiring – so don’t wait to check them out!

disclosure: I received a box of goodies from B. Toys to review, but all opinions expressed are my own!

For a while I’ve been wanting to find him a buckle toy, and I took a few minutes to google it this morning and found a few different options. This one, made by The Buckle Toy, is the nicest (with pinch proof buckles, even) and definitely the cutest and most colorful (thus, most appealing to Zachary). The next time I buy Zachary a gift, I might even buy two, so I can keep, say, the turtle toy at home and the small pillow toy in my diaper bag.

I guess I can see why it’s going extinct – kids today have so many fun digital games and toys that they can play with. Just the other day my mother-in-law took me and Zachary shopping for some good toys and things for him while she is in town visiting, and the array of interesting light-up and musical toys are astounding. The ViewMaster just can’t compete. Still, I plan to buy Zachary the same classic red ViewMaster that I had as a little kid, as well as some great educational reels (and some fun ones too)!

ETA: My mom found my old ViewMaster as well as the collector’s case with all of my reels! I am so excited to see it! My mom says she thinks that my ViewMaster was actually the one that she kept from her own childhood. If it is the same, how cool that Zachary will be one day be using a toy that his Grandma and his Mommy both used and loved!

In this picture, he was not so sure about doing a photo session. He was more interested in holding his little toy, which was a gift from his Gram Z. He likes feeling the different fabrics on his face and hearing the bell inside the toy ring.

Okay, okay, maybe a photo shoot isn’t so bad after all!! I love his smile in this picture.

Of course, we had a spit up incident and I had to change his outfit. Since it was nearly bed time, I moved him to his crib for some more shots. I love this smiley photo. Oh, the gorgeous pillow behind him with his name on it was a gift from my friend Rachael. You can get your own here!

Zachary absolutely LOVES this blue puppy!! His Aunt Amy brought it to him as one of his very first gifts at the hospital, and he became interested in it just a few weeks ago. He loves hearing it play “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” The puppy has a tie on the top of its head so I can tie it to his crib and he loves to bat it around and play with it before he goes to sleep. It is really cute and I think it comforts him to have it near him. I’m sure that when he’s older, he will cuddle with it all the time instead of just having it tied on the bars of the crib.

In the background of this picture, you can see a little owl shaped lovey blankie which was given to him by Aunt Tam. It is so soft and adorable and Zachary loves looking it it. When it’s time to go to bed, I rub the owl on his cheeks so he can feel how soft it is, and he just loves that. He loves to hold on to it and cuddle with it when it’s time to go to sleep.