I should learn from this. But it is hard.

Me and A did som painting the other day. I´ve been buliding a shelf attached to his bunk bed and I wanted it to glow in the dark. A combined night lamp for A who´s afraid of the dark, and a cool shelf for him to put cool stuff on (cars).

I like the pirate theme and made a treasure map in an old school pirate way on a piece of paper. I´ve spent several nights with this drawing. Carefully. Slowly. I wanted it to be really nice for him.
But last week the family all got the cold in some ways and finally I resigned and let A join me. I showed him the drawing and asked him if he wanted to help med finnish the thing.

Here´s the result:

 Ok. A is 4 years old. It´s hard to draw inside the lines. And we did finnish the drawing.

It fit nicely to the top of the shelf and a plexi glas covered the whole thing. I was pretty proud. And A was thrilled when we tested the lamp at thet night:

So I guess I should learn something from this. Something like - it´s not important if some paint got wrong, if some lines were crossed, if somebody thinks that red is a better color for an island on a map than the usual boring yellow. I guess that the important thing is that we spent som really nice time together.
I guess that you should see it that way.

It´s just...

Well, I really didn´t like when my great drawing was molestered by my own son.

Yeah. That´s the ugly thruth. I liked to draw together with him, it was a fine moment. But... ok. I´m just a little disturbed that way. I have to deal with that side of me.

But there will be no playing with my car collection for at least two years.

Basta!

Afraid of the future - part II

A solution is presented. Perhaps.

I got an brilliant answer to my dilemma - when or if I shall reveal my secret car collection for my kids.

My friend A.L. who lives in the outmost northern parts of Sweden remeber his father and a very VERY special toy of his.

"My Dad had a Märklin-railroad with tracks, locomotives, coaches and the whole shabang. All from the late fifties and forward. Mint condition collected during many years. In our family it was part of the Christmas tradition that we were allowed to put out the big cardboard box and carefully, carfully take out the paper boxes with the large locomotive, the small locomotive, the large electric train, the passenger coaches, the timber coach, the oil car, the beer car (!), the open cargo car with the volkswagon Beetle on... well you get it.
It was only permitted to bring this stuff out when dad was present. All the same playing with it. And we were to drive slowly.
I´cant really remember when this happened the first time. But when I was in my younger teens I got the trust to bring out the railroad by myself. And first now, as I´m writing this, I remebered what I used to do. Damn shitty kid that I apperently was.
Obviously I wanted to stage deralis and disasters.
With a Märklin-railroad in mint condition from the fifties.
Oh my god.
But luckily they´re solid toys. It only got some scratches in the painting. But anyway.

Darn. I wrote you because I wanted to convince you that you can learn children to fascinate and to take good care of nice stuff. But now, I´ve only convinced you the other way, that they will smash your cars sooner or later.

No. It doesnt have to be that way.

Dad shouldn´t have let med have access to the railrod in the teens. But I realize now whey he did.

It wasnt that important to him anymore.

Thus: It is possible to convey the feeling of worship and respect. So I wote for six and eight year. Or maybe five or seven. Then you put a fat lock on the cabinet and make the opening something that only happens with special occasions. Since they have cars of their own to play with I assume they could enjoy their dads cars, just to look at.

A very interessting dilemma.
And crazy"

Amen dear A.L! Amen!
And thank you for the beautiful memories!

Ugly Flash!

Well, I´ve been through this before, but I really do not like the new Ultimate Chase car Flash.
It bothers me a lot.
While we now are blessed with a special Swedish car, we´re left with a lousy caracter and, above all, a real ugly looking Diecast:

Why the black lines round the windows? Why? WHY?

From the always very updated site Take Five A Day we´ve got some photos from the recent Toy Fair 2012 in New York City.
According to a sign the Ultimate Chase Cars should be available now, but T5 thinks more like in the beginning of March. It will be ridiculous pricing since the number of cars are so limited. And that leaves me with three disturbing facts:

• It is a ugly looking car
• It is named after a poorly qualified driver
• It will cost me too much money

And still... I´ll probably buy it...

Better news:
I´ve managed to sell the 1:43 Disney Cars I bought by mistake.
And I did good!

Actually I made 150 kronor more than I paid in the beginning. O Yes!

KA - CH(ing)AOW!

Mini vacation in the snow

Cross-country skiing. New and fun for A! V´s quite happy with the ski poles.

We went north this weekend. In Sweden that means colder and more snow.
A tried som skiing for the first time. Cross-country style. It was a total success. He went on and on for over one kilometer on Friday and almost the same on Saturday.


I love to go skiing in the woods. And in Orsa, the place we visited, they got plenty of great tracks.
Me and my wife took turns with the kids so that we could have some alone-time in the tracks every day. Silence - air - nature. And good training too!

V isn´t quite ready for skiing yet but he tried the ski poles... And we went downhill on our Snowracers a lot, he really enjoys that. Snowracer, a english word that we in Sweden use for a special kind of bob sleigh with three runners, two in the back and one up front that you could manage with a steering wheel.

Almost every kid in Sweden has a Snowracer-experience they love to talk about...

We rented a cabin together with a friend of mine and his family. Four grown ups and four children. It was really good actually. The kids got along nicely and the cabin was large enough for the eight of us. I got a lot of energy from theese four days - but right now I´m home from my work because V caught a cold.

We have long winters, with short days and long dark nights in Sweden. It depresses a lot of people here, and I feel it too sometimes. But when you really take advantage of the snow and the special climate we have - it can be very amusing and rewarding.
If you can´t fight it - embrace it! :)

Damn... I sound a lot like my own parents!

Is that something that comes with kids? The echo of your parents in your own voice?

Collecting moments

Shampoo - fun! Bath - fun! The shower - horrible! But two out of three isn´t bad!

One of V´s absolute favourites is taking a bath. We do it almost every evening and he is always excited. On wednesdays he and his grandfather goes to the "habilitation bath" (yes he is that supportive and fantastic, a grandfather every kid should have).
It´s a kind of training in water, led by a physiotherapist, and the intention is that V shall excersise his ability to move freely. I think it helped him a lot while he tried to learn how to crawl and walk.
Now he moves rather freely, with only inflatable pads on his upper arms. Amazing.

Tonight V participated in the shampoo part of the evening bath. For the first time and with quite some joy. A nice moment. I collect nice moments to remember in bad times.

I do think the nice moments tend to come more often these days.

Mystery readers!

Who are you - really?

Mystery readers. Who are you? Piston Cup Racers or just car collectors like myself?

I´ve been studying this blogs statistics, and it turnes out that I got readers mostly in Sweden and the US. Not so strange.  I mean, I am swedish and the whole Cars-thing is american.

(If you just settle for the fact that in 2012 a blog about something as peculiar as collecting childrens toys, hiding them for children and, occasionally, also write about having a disabled kid is a perfectly normal blog. Then it´s not strange at all.)

But I also got readers in Canada, Russia, England, Germany, France, Belgium and Mexico. This last week I actually got one click from Peru as well.

Internet. Wow.

This far I got a few messages with "Bumper Save" from Pennsylvania, US. I would love to get in touch with swedish collctors, or any other collectors world wide. It would be nice to share stories.

Even more so, I would love to get in touch with someone who has a similar disease as V. Or somebody who knows about it more.

Please write! We could have a cars-party over the internet! Showing of our best bargains and brag!

I´d bet you want one of theese for your own huh?

 Send me an email or write a commentary down below.

Size matters

We have som problems in Sweden. And I do not mean with the economy or the booming house prices - no I mean serious problems.

People in Sweden do not know how to properly name their cars.

Nobody use the scale system over here, you know the 1:55 for Mattel cars and 1:43 för Disney cars.

Raoul CaRoule in 1:55 to the left and 1:43 to the right. The right size is to the left. Right?

Instead people write all kinds of stuff like "XL" or "BIIIIIG" or they put ot the size in centimeters.

Not very informative or easy. I read some auction-site information too quickly and ooops - there I got four Disney 1:43 cars by mail. Too bad, I don´t want them (I think they´re quite ugly and too much of a toy.... place for laughter.... but I do!) And they need too much space, thats for sure!

So my humble sugestion to all the swedes out there, trading cars:


USE THE F***ING SYSTEM!

So now I´m selling three of them:

Mach Matsuo - 1:43

Raoul CaRoule - 1:43

Bruno Motoreau - 1:43

Nitroade Team Chief - 1:55

I´ll keep Shu Todoroki 1:43 because I broke the back wing (it´s in plastic). I think it will be a good toy for V. It´s almost 13 centimeters long, a real piece of work, and easier to grip than those from Mattel.
Nitroade Team Chief is fore sale because I got two. Bought him alone last autumn but when they released that 4-pack with chief and three pittys I had to buy him again.

So buy my cars now so I can get money to buy new ones. In the right size!

Training V - a life long commitment

My wife has two cards. The challenge for V is to sort lego pieces by color.

It´s easy to forget. He runs so fast now. He knows how to clear away his glass and plate after dinner. He can clap his tiny hands when they sing "clap your hands" on the DVD. Yes, he´s learned a lot.
But he is still behind. Very much. And will always be.

We know that the lack of myelin in V´s brain slows his learning down. Therefore we need to teach him things that a normal brain learns almost by itself. Like walking, talking and crawling. But sometimes it´s easy to forget.

The play therapist had a few tips. We are to start hiding things from V. But we´ll show him where we hide them. Then we "forget" about them for ten minutes or so, then we tell V to look for it. That will trigger his "Working Memory".

And the color thing above. My wife did it today. V started to sort blue and red lego pieces and the first five were right. Then he started to mess around. Maybe he got tired of the boring game. Or maybe he has no clue. It´s hard to say.

We also have a schedule with exercises for his electronic toothbrush - outside his mouth. That will hopefully stimulate V´s nerve cells around his mouth to evolve and in the end help his speech.

There´s plenty to do. It´s a long way to go. It´s not always easy. But there´s no alternate route. This journey has to be done and every milestone we reach we celebrate even more.

But damn - it´s hard somedays.