Friday, September 7, 2012

"Towelie!"

My future-mother-in-law took us on a little shopping spree for Little It things (she insisted), and we ended up raiding the Prenatal store, one of the premier baby-stuff stores in the city.  We ended up getting lots of socks, a mobiel, Rupsje nooitgenoeg, and a few other little things that, strictly speaking, we didn't need, but could be useful in a pinch (pacifiers, holy cow do we have pacifiers).  All in all, it was a fun day, mostly because our first concern could be how cute something was and not how much it would cost. (The total, in case you're thinking that we're total mooches, was still way less than the cost of a modern carseat.)  One thing we did not get, much to my relief, was a towel-y toy:


We've received 5 of them already.  It'd be cute if they weren't so...baffling.  I mean, they're not exactly stuffed animals--just a dislocated head on a towel.  Presumably they're easier to clean than stuffed animals?  But the state of some of the towel-y toys I've seen suggests that they've been fused to the child through years of loving and hugging (and some drool as mortar), which sort of defeats the purpose to their being washable.  I'll grant you that they are rather cute, even if you don't know what to do with them, but still:  when you have 5 and the kid's not even born yet you have to start wondering which Dutch cultural meme you missed.

Karel's nieces have one (or had one--I haven't seen it the last few times I went visiting, so maybe it got grungy enough to warrant a trip over the rainbow bridge for towel-y toys), so while the concept isn't new, I hadn't quite realized that this is, apparently, the Toy in the Netherlands.  We even got one from a couple who live in Scotland--they'd gone to a store in London, presumably a very chic and very white store, to find one.  Sophie the Giraffe may be de rigeur in the US, but in the Netherlands, the towel-y toy remains king, apparently.  

4 comments:

  1. We have one of those toys too :) The one with the orange and red patterns.

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  2. Yeah, that one came in my care package that the midwife gave me...is there going to be a Stewie in the future?

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  3. I'm having the same thought with these and I did with the diapers that you are sewing: they go over your shoulder? We used to call them 'burp cloths' when mine were little: during the long jiggling and patting sessions after a meal, the air invariably came up with a bit of dinner as well.

    And, yes, you need the pacifiers ('nuk'). I'm smiling about all this even as I write - you've got some great times ahead of you.

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  4. They're definitely toys...don't worry, we've got plenty of burp cloths handy :-)

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