A Little Silver Radio, the New Best Friend

The year-plus long fascination with the vacuum cleaner has finally abated.

Yes, when I bring out the vacuum cleaner he will still explore it and "play" it. Although I've noticed he's not that thrilled when I actually run it. Every time the vacuum cleaner is turned on, he runs to the kitchen to pull the cord out of the socket. Obviously, not a safe thing to do. As a result, the last few times I've vacuumed, I had to carry him in one arm, while I vacuumed with the other. Kind of difficult and heavy to do.

But I digress. Ivan's new best appliance friend is a little silver radio. It's a little radio/casette player we bought a few years ago to take to the beach with us. It was stil fun of sand and it still had working batteries in it. As we discovered, the radio runs on batteries if its wire is unplugged from the radio. If it's plugged in, then it overrides the batteries and it doesn't work. It a really little radio, with a cassette player and one speaker. We probably bought it for 20 bucks some 6 years ago. That radio, if you could even buy it today, would probably retail for less that Ivan's Fridge DJ radio.

When we painted the bathroom about a month or two ago, we took the radiof off its perch on the cabinet shelf, and brough it to the bedroom. It's been Ivan's best friend ever since. First thing in the morning he goes to get the radio and plays with it. As soon as the evening bath is over, he runs to get his "me, me" (i.e. milk) and the radio.

It's an endless source of fascination. There's the antenna. There's the volume dial. There are the stations AM and FM dials. Then there is the casette part, with its play, fast forward and stop buttons. And then there is the cord that attaches. Fascinating.

And the radio does something: music and talking come out of it. And when Mr. Meh hears a song he likes, he bobs his head and upper body according to the rhytm. It's adorable.

He's already managed to take of the part that controls the volume, the plastic front with the radio channels/bars written out and disabled the the dial bar, which moves as you turn the dial. But not a big deal. The radio still works. And to control the volume, we just need to put something sharp the volume slot to turn the inner part of the dial---something sharp includes the bottoms of Mr. Meh diaper rash creams. He's seen how I turn the volume with the diaper rash cream, so now he can do it too.