They Are Practically Amish!

So, my mom has this warped idea that none of her grandchildren have any toys. I actually got a phone call a couple of years ago from her stating "Your nieces have no toys. None whatsoever. It is like they are Amish or something." Yes, leave it to my mother to reduce an entire way of life and belief system to, well, a lack of stuff.  Regardless, I get to my brother's house and it looks like a toy store threw up. Beauty and reality are, apparently, in the eyes of the beholder.

So to remedy the situation, my mother the Drama Queen decides to make toys for the girls. Before you think "Isn't she clever and creative, and how she must love those children" let me stop you in your tracks. She did this only to attempt to guilt my brother and sister-in-law into buying the girls even more stuff.



Let me describe her "ghetto toys" as Jimmy {the much beleaguered brother} and I call them. An orange juice can full of dried beans and a toilet paper cardboard tube thing full of rice. Both duct-taped together. Seriously, how much more ghetto can you get than rice and beans duct-taped into your recycling?



Naturally, the cardboard tube has a life expectancy of 10 minutes before there is rice everywhere. Everyone except my mother the genius could see this one coming. She seemed shocked.



Fast forward two years and Jimmy gets a call from my mother. "Your nephew has no toys, none whatsoever. Those two hippie minimalists. Do the girls still have the orange juice can of beans for me to give him?"



Yesterday, my mom leaves me a v-mail stating that my sister-in-law is moving the girls to different car seats and that I should ask her if I can have the old ones. {God forbid that she simply ask about this while she is standing there. Nope, let's add in an extra step}. So I send off an email to Jimmy asking him if he will save them for us. This is his hilarious response:



"No problem, we have a bunch of other toys and stuff too. Solidarity among the minimalists."



My brother is to funny what my mother is to annoying.