On her first birthday, Anneli naturally got a few toys as gifts.  Several of them have become strong favourites, both for her and us, and they’re all the ones made of wood.

I think Anneli’s favourite seems to be the Brio stacking clown.  It’s a set of wooden rings that sit on a pole, and if stacked in the right order they make a wee clown.  The box said “19+ months” so I was expecting it to be ages before she had the coordination required to put the rings on the pole, however she cracked that part of it within about 2 minutes!  She still likes putting all the rings on, but of course they’re never in the right order.

The Brio stacking clown

My favourite has to be the Buzzy Bee.

Buzzy Bee

Of course it’s a NZ classic and I’m sure she’ll end up with a lot more Buzzy Bee merchandise in the years to come!  Now that Anneli has started walking I hope she’ll realise soon that she can drag this little fella around the house and watch his wings spin  🙂

Anneli also likes boinging the tail on this sausage dog, also from Brio:

Brio sausage dog

Again, she’ll hopefully realise soon that she can take him for walks rather than just boinging his springy tail and flossing her bottom teeth with his leash.

Finally, there is this great wooden puzzle from Kärnan:

Wooden farmyard puzzle

We go through the various animal noises together, but the only ones she seems interested in imitating are the lamb and the tractor (yes, the tractor counts as a farm animal).