Garanimals Wooden Blocks from Walmart

My husband and I LOVE toys!  When we were first dating and all of our nieces and nephews were babies, we loved heading to the toy store to pick out toys for them.  We would spend hours in the store looking at all the different items and testing out the ones that had "try me" buttons! 

Since then, we still love toys, but we tend to go for the more "classic" toys now.

For her first Christmas, my husband wanted to get Grace a set of wooden blocks.  We looked in several places and also online and could only find very small blocks.  We were looking for the chunky, wooden blocks that were painted with bright colored ABCs.  I almost settled for the smaller blocks, but just couldn't bring myself to spend the money on them when I knew we wouldn't be happy with them.

A month or two ago, I was strolling through the toy aisle at Walmart and there they were - the chunky, wooden blocks painted with brightly colored ABCs!  I wasn't even looking for them that day, I pretty much gave up any hope of finding them! 

Turns out, they are from a new line of toys by Garanimals and Walmart.  At the time, I didn't care about that, I was just happy that I found the blocks that we wanted for Grace!  I don't remember the exact price of them.  I'm thinking somewhere around $10 or $12.  I'm pretty sure I just put them right into my cart without even checking the price!

We didn't give them to her right away.  She had gotten so many nice gifts for Christmas so we decided to put them away for her first birthday before giving them to her.  Her birthday was little over a week ago.  Sunday night, Joe was putting together one of her toys and Grace wanted to help.  Of course, only being a year old, she wasn't much of a help. 

I opened up her blocks to play with her and she was not interested in them at all.  I was bummed.  I thought, all of that searching for them and she doesn't even like them!  Well, I guess "helping" daddy put together her new toys was more fun to watch than playing with blocks! 

Today, I tried again.  After Grace was finished eating lunch, she seemed content to just sit in her high chair.  That's not something that usually happens.  Once she loses interest in the food, she loses interest in the high chair.  Since I wasn't finished going through the mail, I thought of trying the blocks on the tray of her high chair. 

She loved them!  I built a tall tower of blocks and let her knock them down.  I pretended that I didn't want her to knock them over and when they fell, she let out such a belly laugh!  We did that several more times and she just giggled and giggled.  I tried to capture a video on my camera phone, but couldn't work the camera and build the blocks at the same time.   Grace wasn't allowing the blocks to stand long enough for me to grab the camera! 

I did manage to snap this picture of her, it's a little blurry...sorry!  Most of my pictures of Grace are blurry...she doesn't sit still for very long! 

Okay, so now that I look at the picture, it's A LOT blurry and the lighting in the kitchen is pretty bad.  But at least I got the picture, right? 

She played for a while in the high chair and really enjoyed those blocks. 

After dinner tonight, we had to take Grace for her one year check up.  Poor baby needed 4 needles!  She cried much longer than she normally does when she gets shots!  Mommy too!  :)  Good thing Daddy goes with us!  

When we returned home, we played all played with the blocks on the floor while the Backyardigans was on.  She really enjoyed knocking them down!  Especially the really tall building that Joe was building for her! 

I'm really happy that we found those blocks and I really hope she will enjoy playing with them on her high chair tray again while I clean the kitchen tomorrow! 

I'll be sharing this post with  Works For Me Wednesday, a weekly blog carnival hosted by Kristen at We are THAT Family. 

Edited to add: 

I'll be making my 100th post this week and will be announcing a giveaway to celebrate!  Be sure to stay tuned so you don't miss out!!!