Trying Out Tools

Yesterday, while we were visiting Teenie Greenies for story time, Maeve fell in love with a toy.  We go to this store often enough without her noticing me buying anything for her that she doesn't usually ask me for things, but she hauled this toy over to me while I was talking to the owner.  She looked up at me with great excitement and wanted to show me how it worked.  When I saw what it was, and how happy it made her, I decided to go for it.

So Maeve got a little Fischer Price tool bench yesterday.  It has a hammer, a screwdriver, a wrench, nails, and screws, plus a little box to store everything in.  It's pretty simple, but she really loves it already.  She can just about use the screwdriver on the screws, and hasn't figured out the wrench yet.  I'm working on teaching her how to pull the nails out with the back of the hammer.

While she was playing with her new acquisition yesterday, I was musing in a feminist sort of way how being a sort of a tomboy could earn her some respect in certain fields, among certain people.  Her interest in space, fixing things, robots, dinosaurs, any one of those could make her male friends who would otherwise not have given her the time of day.  And it made me think how she's lucky, in a sense, that she's female and has "male" interests, and not the other way around.  Because people think it's cute when I put dinosaur t-shirts on her that are blue and green and brown, but I would get a lot of looks if she were my son all decked out in Minnie Mouse gear.

But I can only parent the child I have, and I make it my business to help her learn more about what she interested in.  She's been watching two Sesame Street videos about tools for about a week now, so the tool set was a natural next step.  I have a feeling Grandpa Dale will be very excited to help her play with her tool set, too, since he's a fixing things kinda guy.