Ask...
... and you shall receive.
My middle son is big into animals at the moment, and has been since he was a tiny baby. All creatures great and small get the same loving treatment from my gorgeous little man, hugs for kangaroos and koalas at wildlife parks, gentle patting of dogs and cats whilst out for walks and soft poking of insects (have to control this urge a bit with so many dangerous nasties in Australia). My little S has special needs and isn't speaking yet, but playing with animals is a great way to get him to vocalise and we have started building up a lovely collection of high quality Schleich animals.
They are expensive to buy new but worth it as they are of a lovely quality and don't break or keep falling over like cheaper toy animals which can be quite frustrating for a little man. We have been slowly building our collection, picking up new creatures on our visits to our nearest toy shop.
A little while back I did a post about horsey-related items I had found, and mentioned I was hopeful of one day coming across a bagful of Schleich animals at an op shop or market. Well, my wish was granted BIG TIME on a couple of recent op shop visits!
Firstly, I visited my favourite Vinnie's a few suburbs away and found 4 bags of animals marked at $3 per bag. Squishing the animals up against the plastic I could see there were at least a couple of Schleichs in each bag, but when I got them home, I checked, and 29 out of the 40 or so animals were Schleich, Bingo! Then a couple of weeks later on a visit to my local Vinnie's I found another bag of animals marked at $3 - and voila! 14 more Schleich animals! I am thrilled to have picked up a total of 43 Schleich animals for a mere $15! The animals range from little meercats right up to big elephants and are probably worth a couple of hundred dollars in total new.
I am super-excited with these finds as we now have nearly a whole zoo of animals for my little man to play with.
May I introduce you to our little habitat...
After years of hibernation they were re-released into the wild...
Unlikely friendships were formed...
"The back pain is a killer isn't it"?
"My neck IS longer than your trunk, now can you just drop it"?
Reminiscing about cooler climes.
"I'm the good-looking one".
Numbers had been dwindling at this mothers' group for a while...
Family ties.
"Just working on our posture".
Realising they were outnumbered by cats 5 to 1, the dogs made a hasty exit.
10 comments:
what a delightful blog post, such a lovely story behind your op shop animal finds! I am going to look out for Scheich animals on my op shop visits from now on .. if I find any, I would like to send them to your little man if I may ? :)
A this post brought a tear to my eyes. I know how tough it has been for you with little S, so if anyone deserves a wonderful thing like this to happen to them it is to you and S. Happy weekend.
Your little Mr S is just adorable! And congrats on such exciting finds at your local op shops! They are just beautiful animals. Really fantastic!
Would love to have those gorillas for myself.
I be he just loves playing with them.
What beautiful pics of S! And from the great poses and comments of the animal toys, it looks like S's mom had a great time with the toys too :)
Now that's the find of the century!! OMG is all I can say. Having two boys myself I know what this means. They are seriously the best animal toys there are. They have that little spot on the bottom don't they. I used to allow my boys to buy one every time we went to the zoo (we were zoo friends). We'd pop in for a couple of hours back then when life was simple and we cruised through it. I adore all your photos of his first collection (?)... Great to see your family shots too. Are you insane with that snake hugging your shoulders. You're a great Mum!! Pruxxx
What a wonderful collection - and how BEAUTIFUL is your little boy. Curls. Chubby cheeks. Sigh. So adorable.
Love the mothers' group comment. Cute.
Truly the chubbiest cheeks I ever did see! How cute!
WOW! That is a really wonderful collection and it sounds like they all made their way to a really sweet little boy too :) So awesome!
Wish I could be there to snuggle those chubby cheeks! I loved this post.
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