Before becoming a parent, I vowed we would not succumb to the marketing of “Licensed” brands and products. Our children would not be running around in Dora or Thomas clothes, with matching shoes, hats and sunglasses. They would not have Wiggles Lunchboxes and backpacks, or bedrooms with matching Bob the Builder bedcover and curtains.

 

So I’m getting down off my soapbox to share this story with you. It was a day when I would find myself walking around the house with a baby on one hip, toddler on the other – both screaming – and me laughing in the middle. Yup, laughing. I didn’t get the things on my to-do list done, but I had some great cuddles with my boys. How special are cuddles!?

 

My gorgeous little 6month old, B2, has started teething. On this day he decided he was just going to cry. B1 also had a virus that hadn’t been too bad, but this day he slumped quite quickly with a fever, lethargic etc. He wanted cuddles constantly and didn’t even want to eat!!!

 

The icing on the cake though was something completely different. Have you even had one of those little cracks under your toe, where the skin splits just where the toe joins onto your foot?? It stings quite a bit.

 

Well, you’d think I’d be happy that it wasn’t me that had one of those annoying little cuts under my toe. It was B1 – my grumpy little sick boy. What felt like everytime he put his foot onto the ground, he would whinge, cry and ask for a cuddle. *sigh*

 

After waking from his afternoon nap, he just cried. And cried. And cried. He didn’t feel well, his toe was very sore, he was inconsolable. I tried offering food, drinks, games, bandaids & creams, TV, cuddles with me, cuddles with Woo (a visitor), ‘medicine’, books … None of them worked.

 

Enter… The Wiggles.

 

“Oh?” he says. “Wiggles…”

 

Woo and I managed to convince B1 that by putting on a Wiggles bandaid (that ironically I had bought for fun before having kids or even being pregnant), the Wiggles would be ‘hugging’ his sore toe and making it better. He could then lie on the couch with his feet up and watch a Wiggles dvd – what fun!

 

He stopped crying. “Wiggles…”

 

So I had to go hunt for that Wiggles dvd we’d been given as a hand-me-down that was somewhere in our collection yet-to-be watched. BINGO!

 

“Peace and quiet”. After 20-30mins of screaming, which had felt like forever… there was some relative “quiet” in the form of 4 guys in multicoloured skivvies dancing and singing on my television.

 

B2 then woke and started screaming again, but I’d had a few minutes of peace, and B1 had settled from his hysterics. I’d let one of “those” products save the day…

 

For the record, B1 will struts around in his “Thomas” sunglasses (a very cool present) with his Thomas hat (an awesome clearance I found), with his Thomas PJs (Nan found on clearance)… B1 loves his Cars BluRay (another generous gift, with a bedquilt cover), and Cars drawing set (I picked up at a garage sale for $1.50). Need I mention B2 is now fits into the Bob the Builder shirt I picked up at an Op Shop for $1? I could go on… I guess I’ve crossed over to the darkside 😛

 

How do you deal with “licensed” products in your family?

Image credits: The Wiggles & Thomas The Tank Engine