"Don't adjust your sets. Welcome to the Oswald Cobblepot school of driving. Gentlemen, start your screaming!"

Ok so Im a sucker for a smiley child, after Seth writing his first post "In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play." i had to get him the Penguin submarine so Mommy could play Batman with him. I lasted about 24 hours before i bought it online. Instead of it being for Seth though the note from the pirates said that it was a gift for Mrs M. Obviously she was over the moon i mean what mother wouldn't want the gift of a Penguin Sub and Mr Cobblepot to play with. As it was a gift for Mrs M and Seth they would like to write today's post so here they are. . . .

It's Mommy ( Mrs M ) and Seth here! ( Seth typed all of this)

The penguin submarine : The pirates left the penguin submarine in the hall by the bath room door a few weeks ago. Mommy was in the bath.

The Penguin came with a umbrella, and you press the button and spins and it spins and it spins...

the submarine shoots disks out of the front, the disks shoot out of ....... the BEAK!!!!!

And the legs wave at the back when you roll it over the floor.

The Penguin submarine has ..... a spy hole!!! !!! I think this is cool, because the people can see out of it.

I like his coat. It is smart it looks like it's posh!!!!!!

I wish that it could go in the bath and I wish it went 'Beep Beep Beep' like the submarine in the Batman Film from along time ago.

Mommy wishes that it was big enough for Seth and Opeie to fit inside because that would be so fun and cool. Mommy likes the Penguins submarine because it looks very french, the Penguin has the best outfits and clothes.

The wings .... FLAP UP AND DOWN!

Other toys we might like in the Batman collection, are the Joker's Fun House, the Jokers lorry, the BatBoat, the Jokers Tank, and batcopter, and Mommy would like Poisen ivys house. ( If that exsists!)

It's time for bed, night night..... until next time!!!

"Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad."

Although Ive written about Seth's drawings before ('Drawing is simply a line going for a walk'), whenever he has finished a piece that he is doing and he shows us i am always surprised and secretly in complete awe. Id say i was quite arty and i can draw but nothing that comes from the end of my pencil has anywhere near as much character as the things drawn by Seth. I think his style is truly amazing and I'm so proud of him. With most of the characters he draws there is so much detail put in yet they are drawn so simply. I think I'm going to have to start framing my favourites.

 

As i mentioned in the last post, they are great because he doesn't even need to tell anyone what he has drawn because they are so well done it is obvious (unless of course you really don't know many super heroes etc). Its great that he loves to draw and we will always encourage him to be creative. I remember drawing a lot with my Dad when i was younger, those lovely memories never go away and i hope our boys feel the same when their older.

I think its so cute how he has written 'yodur', i wish i still had things like this from my childhood to look back on but sadly having to distance myself from a lot of my family has shattered any chances of me even getting old photographs of myself.

Seths writing has come on so well since being at school, he has a rare muscle condition and we thought it would really effect the speed his writing developed but he doesn't let anything bother him and he just gets on with things. Everybody loves him and were really proud of everything he does.

This morning before school i asked him if he would draw me a picture of Gotham's finest, and yet again he blew me away with his adorable characters. He likes to have his action figures in front of him to draw and when he is choosing a colour he holds the pen up to his figures to make sure they are the right shade. He wanted me to cut out the drawing in the middle as he deemed it "not good enough" but i love all of his drawings so it had to stay.

Well it would have been rude for him not to have paid homage to the villains too so as we had plenty of time before putting on his uniform etc he decided to draw a few of his favourites. everything he draws comes out so well and the characters always have nice friendly faces. I should ask him to draw someone a bit more gruesome like the Toxic Avenger, Pinhead or Freddy krueger just to see how they come out.

Seth's drawing also comes in handy when its peoples Birthday's, who doesn't like receiving a home made card drawn by a child! they are so much nicer to keep than anything hallmark could produce. Yesterday was our neighbour Amelia's first Birthday and Seth drew her a lovely card.

Opeie has started getting in on the drawing action too and while mommy was at work a couple of days ago we made her a card. It was mainly for him to say sorry for being awake through the night and how much he loves her (we all do).

Being quite arty ourselves we will always encourage the boys to express themselves whichever way they feel. And we do what we can to include as many different media's as we can. Especially the messy one's, Me and Seth have been talking about Paper mache Star Wars masks for in the summer holiday so watch this space.

"Fabulous secret powers were revealed to me the day I held aloft my magic sword and said... By the power of Greyskull!"

After mentioning my 'my pet monster' in one of my previous posts it got me thinking about all the toys i had when i was younger and how attatched to them i was. Although the boys have a lot of toys i don't think they feel the same about them as i used to of mine. Opeie's to young to understand at the moment anyway but I'm wondering if Seth will be like i was. I cant really remember how i felt about them when i was 5 but i know as i got to around 8-9 i loved my action figures. This post is just me reminiscing .

I used to take this guy everywhere with me,he was quite large so if we were going somewhere where he couldnt be carried i also had the 'wogster' hand puppet as my smaller back up (not really sure why i would need a back up monster??). If i could find one of these brand new i would buy one for Opeie but their about 26 years old so i doubt that will happen.

I remember me and my friends having Boglins and walking around trying to scare girls when they least expected it. The toys from when i was younger seem so much more interesting than the rubbish you get these days? a friend of ours son has got Bakugan figures?? whats that all about? theres nothing to them i really dont understand the fascination.

Other than my Star Wars figures my favourite action figures were my He-man collection, i had loads of them and they were amazing. I was really lucky that my parents did buy me a lot of nice things (it may have been to shut me up though but i cant really remember much my memory is getting worse as i get older). I do remember obsessing over the Moss Man figure though until i was bought it on holiday in Wales. It makes me laugh how the way i was hasnt really changed much over the years, i still obsess about the things I'm collecting.

I think that my love of the Super hero squad figures stemmed from these guys, i had so many M.U.S.C.L.E figures and could usually be found taking a bum bag full of them around with me everywhere (it was the 80's i was allowed, plus I'm sure the bumbag colour scheme complemented the colours on my shellsuit). I have debated recently collecting these again but i dont think Seth would be all that interested plus i sometimes worry a little that by getting him into the things i like he's not included in the things some of the other children at school play with. Although he loves Star Wars so he'll always have William. I think if i did start trying to get hold of them it would be a little collection for myself.

One year for christmas me and my sisters each got a werebear, these were great. It was basically a care bear until you turned its head and hands inside out transforming it into an aggressive looking but still quite cute soft toy. Im kicking myself now that i don't still own most of my old toys but they were all just given away to younger children in my family. I recently watched 2 packs of the 80's Marvel Heroes and villains Top Trumps go for £150 which i had both of, its things like that that make me never want to get rid of any of the boys toys. I think were going to need a lot of storage.

Thinking about it Im not sure why i liked Super Naturals so much but i had quite a few of these and Visionaries. I suppose there wasnt really anything else like them. I don't think my friends had any of these but to be fair i spent a lot of my action figure play time on my own.

Watching the WWF Wrestling took up a lot of my spare time from about 12 onwards and obviously my love of the wrestling had to be backed up by a collection of figures, i was never bought any of the WWF figures from my parents, i got them all by swapping other toys for them. i wish i had a group of friends i could swap toys with now it might make my collections a lot easier. Although I'm not into wrestling at all now id love to still have my figures and I'm quite sure Seth would play with them too.

My friend christian has hundreds of these along with belts etc (nice to know that I'm not the only geek out there amongst my friends).

These are just the main toys i can remember playing with a lot but I'm sure as soon as i click publish ill think of a whole load more. There are some that i had briefly but they never really made a lasting impression on me such as M.A.S.K, Bravestarr, Micro Machines and Thundercats, i know these are all saute after but at the time they obviously didn't do it for me. It will be interesting to see if the boys get really involved in the blog because id really like to hear what they missed from when they were younger. The difference is i will have most of their things in storage so their reminiscing can be a little more hands on.

"I be rubber, thou art glue. Whatever thou speaketh doth bounce off me and cleave to you! "

It's about that time again, My Super Hero Squad collection part 3 (Part 1 / Part 2). I was going to hold on for a bit until i had collected some more but i need to get these packed away into storage so here it is. There was a seller on eBay a few weeks back getting rid of his fairly big collection so i watched and couldn't believe how much some of them went for. Mrs M thinks i should just keep collecting these and give them to Opeie when he's much older if they become more collectable.

Either way the collection is steadily on the up. there are hundreds of these figures, thankfully what has made it easier to keep track of is this Collection Heroes edition iPad app. This is great as it has all of the available collection with pictures and you can mark the ones that you own. It also has the Galactic Heroes collection too so my new collection for Seth has just been made easier too. (which im going to need as im not as knowledgeable about Star Wars characters).

I know these have already been mentioned in my Father's Day post but as their a recent edition i thought id include them. there's quite a few Iron Man boxes to collect, these are the first for my collection so I'm going to be busy. Ive only just found out about 3 Avengers Assemble boxes which i need to find and the 3 Amazing Spider-man boxes have been released but unfortunately only in the US. Doesnt make things any easier for me!

"I bear a charmed life."

Me and Opeie dropped Mrs M off at work today and was given some pocket money for good behaviour, so off we trotted to Build a bear workshop to get Opeie a teddy. After picking the lifeless bear pelt's up one at a time and waving them in front of Opeie's face he finally reached out and grabbed one (it did take him while). I cant wait for him to be talking soon, it will make decision making so much easier although to be honest i was more interested in the outfits as they still had their avengers range in.

Opeie is Spider-man mad, if it has spidey on it he's got to have it, and i mean anything (I think my next post will be all about that). Recently though he's been taking in a lot of what Seth does and he's started doing his own version of the Hulk Smash which seems to consist of him sticking his clenched fists out in front and saying "GRRRRRRR". It is very very cute!!

So obviously i thought it would be nice for his new bear who we named GRRRRRRR on his birth certificate to be dressed very elegantly in Incredible Hulk attire.

The great thing about our new bear is he complements 'Spider-Bear' who i have had since Spider-Man 3 came out back in 2007. If build a bear teddies were a little less pricey i probably would have come home with an Iron man one too but maybe ill just buy the outfit.

It was an enjoyable half an hour which almost ended in a screaming fit when Opeie decided he didn't like the noise the stuffing machine made clinging to me for dear life. Nothing a cuddle from daddy doesn't sort out though. We recorded him a voice too, i held back the urge to just have him shouting 'Bear Smash' and said something a little more personal to Opeie ending "you will always be my favourite super hero". 

We left the shop with a very happy boy and Hulk can be happy too knowing he is no longer doomed to walk the earth alone.

"droids don't pull people's arms out of their sockets when they lose. Wookiees are known to do that."

Today is William's brother Matthews birthday bowling party and Seth is very excited. I love going to the parties and seeing how happy the kids are. When your older you tend to forget how simple and care free life used to be. I went to one a few weeks ago and the kids looked so happy dancing to the Hokey Cokey and the Superman song.

I asked Matthew's mom what to get him but i obviously knew it was going to be Star Wars related, i just didn't know what. It seems that William likes the more aggressive characters with the blasters and lightsabers etc but clearly Matthew has a more sensitive side as he favours the Droids and Wookies.

So me and Seth looked about and decided to buy him a large 13" Chewbacca figure, hopefully when him and William are having a battle, over sized Chewbacca will give him more of an advantage over the smaller lightsaber wielding characters.

Seth thought it would be a good idea to cut up one of his Star Wars comics to use as wrapping paper and he was right it looks fab, and what star wars birthday would be complete without a message from Yoda himself?

Any way Happy Birthday Matthew, were really looking forward to your birthday celebrations.




*Note to self: Don't let your 1 year old play with the box of someone else's present! packaging looks like its been kicked around a car park!!!

“You’ve never heard of the Millennium Falcon? … It’s the ship that made the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs.”

It's time to get over the Star Wars sadness that has occured over the last few months and embrace it fully. Seth lives and breaths the force and there is nothing this super hero fan can do about that. So let the Galactic heroes collection for Seth's Birthday and Christmas commence. Its not been that long since i wrote the last post including the pictures of the figures he already had but Ive already managed to get my hands on all of these and ended up with a second Millenium Falcon (which is useless to me). It seems that these are far easier to get hold of than the Super hero Squad figures, which for Seth will be great news but for me and Opeie its a bit frustrating.

I may not be into Star Wars much but i do love these little figures, the main problem i have though is that apart from episodes IV-VI, i have no idea of the names of most of the characters making it very difficult to keep track of the collection. This will probably mean somewhere down the line i will end up buying characters i already have. Obviously multiple storm troopers would be a bonus but who wants 1 jar jar binks let alone 2???

Collecting these has reminded me of all the figures i loved of mine, my favourites when i was younger were Max Rebo the leader of Jabba's house band (the blue elephant looking thing with the trunk playing the crazy circle piano) and the Gamorrean Guard (the Green Pig Faced fellow wielding an axe from my last Galactic Heroes post. 

I was always playing with my Star Wars figures and now I'm thinking about it i dont think my love of marvel really got properly going until my mid teens so i guess i see why Seth is so into it. As much as he goes on about Star Wars if i ask him what he wants to watch on the TV, 9 times out of 10 he will say Spider-Man so maybe there's still hope. 

 

"Retiring is one thing. Being retired is something else altogether."

It always makes me a little sad when the boys grow out of their toys and are no longer played with. Recently it has come to my attention that the cast of Disney Cars have outstayed their welcome in the house. Seth apparently needs the extra shelf space and in his words "you can put them on eBay i don't really play with them anymore" (this maybe because a while back he sold his He-man collection and we used the money to buy his Batcave so I'm guessing there's something new that he has his eye on). Now there's the 'do i put them on eBay or will Opeie be into them when he's a bit older' situation?? Opeie like's playing with his push along bubble blowing mater so there's a good chance he will.

It doesn't seem that long ago that Seth was lightening mcqueen crazy but unfortunately the cars don't wield lightsaber's or swing from building to building via web so i guess they didn't stand a chance against the super hero heavy weights.

Ive got to admit i still really like Maters tall tales and the first movie, I was looking forward to seeing the sequal but like most things they had to take it to far. I was really disappointed and although Seth did watch it a few times after he soon lost interest. They were never going to have the same kind of appeal as Captain America or Darth Vader.

I was never really impressed by the toys, they always seemed like a tackier version of Seths thomas the tank engine wooden trains for his brio track (which i will write about soon as i think their great). The train and the yellow truck were the last two that we bought him and i don't think they were ever played with after the day he got them out of the box.

For Christmas last year we bought Seth a few set's of Cars Lego but it seem's that the Lightening Mcqueens retirement had already happened and we were unaware (and I'm usually so clued in when it comes to toys). The one set hasn't even made it out of the box. Which makes me realise that a lot more information needs to be gathered before this Christmas.

The two other sets were never played with once they were made and smashed up so i spent a while rummaging through 25kg of Lego to find all the little pieces (which was a nightmare) and put them in Ms M's zip lock bags that she loves so dearly (but that's a post for another time!!!). Seth hasn't even noticed they have gone so maybe it will be something for Opeie to play with when he's got over the 'Lego is for eating phase'.

It is sad that the toys have lost their appeal but we have all been there. i remember when i was younger deciding one day that i was to big to be playing with my 'my pet monster' (who had been in some ways my closest friend growing up, mostly seen on my back with his handcuffs around my throat).

Sadly when my toys reached their retirement years they were passed on to two of my cousins who i remember just used to destroy them. Seth and Opeie's on the other hand will be packed away carefully to live out their elder lives comfortably or at least until they are given a new lease of life to grandchildren maybe. or even someone we know that is less fortunate than us having all these wonderful toys.

So Lightening Mcqueen and all your friends. From Me, Mrs M and The boys it was a pleasure knowing you. Goodnight.

"That's my secret, Cap: I'm always angry."

A few days ago we had to quickly rush out so get Seth something sporty for school as he had a sports/olympics theme none school uniform day and we had completely forgotten about it until 17:00 the night before. Had it been a Super hero themed none school uniform day i can guarantee i would have been a lot more organised and he prob would have ended up that school morning with a selection of outfits to choose from just incase.

Oh well ill just have to wait patiently for that Super hero themed birthday party invite that may appear in his book bag anytime soon. 

Anyway after popping into the sports shop Mrs M decided she wanted a look around Asda living (oh joy i thought at the time). I was very happy that we went in there though, While we were perusing the isles we spotted this Incredible Hulk pyjama set. Since buying them Opeie hasn't wanted to take them off and keeps sticking his arms out and doing a very serious faced Hulk Smash (I'm so proud).

I tried every thing to get Opeie to stand in front of the huge Hulk canvas in Seth's room but Kid's being Kid's he didn't want to stand still. Thank fully Mrs M has magic fingers when it comes to Photoshop so she made me a Smashing (god that was terrible) comic book cover.

" Only a Sith Lord deals in absolutes."

Ive been a fan of the Fisher Price and Playskool comic figures for a long time, even before the boys were a part of my life. I had collected the Spider-man and friends Marvel range when they were first released (Kinda hoped id have a son to give them to and when i finally did he was very excited about them). A year or so ago i spotted the Playskool Star Wars range and knew that i had to have them for Opeie even though at the time he was probably the size of a peanut unaware of his dad's obsessive compulsive collections.

Even if they brought out a new range of these when the boys were older i think i would still buy them for any future grandchildren we may have. Probably sounds a bit mental but i want to be prepared (i wonder if i would be cool grandad or just weird old grandad that still reads comics and loves Spider-man?). I think that these toys are great for getting your kids into the things that you yourself love and more importantly, being made by either Playskool of Fisher Price you know that they are safe for your little ones.

Seth would be all over these if he knew they were in the house, He really like's the chunkier figures, i think its because their more robust, so many of the action figures you get these days are flimsy and have so many joints a younger child could easily break them. I sometimes get these out of their box for Opeie to play with while Seth's at school and he nearly always goes for C3P0 (I think he must be part Magpie).

The X-Wing for this collection is great, making noises and playing the theme tune etc. Only problem is the size and heavyness of it, i wouldn't say it was great for the younger kids. I'm assuming Seth will end up playing with this more and Opeie with the smaller Galactic Heroes X-Wing. I like how with many of the boys toys each of them have their own version of their toys so they can play together.

Well im still missing two of the characters which i will get round to tracking down eventually. Unfortunately with Star Wars i have a lot less motivation with completing a collection. Not that the boys would even notice, their just happy of the new toys.