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"  &amp;quot;Mom! I&amp;#039;ve got a rubber ball collection!&amp;quot; my fourth grader announced as he returned from a weekend at my in-laws&amp;#039; house. Then he presented me with a yellow plastic supermarket bag full of rubber balls. &amp;quot;Woooow,&amp;quot; I offered, winking at my mother-in-law and then peering into the bag. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s some collection.&amp;quot; A collection that&amp;#039;s been bouncing around me ever since. It bounces off the refrigerator. It bounces across the floor. It bounces just past my tea mug, over my newspaper and under the heater. Woooow. It had never occurred to me to provide my children with a rubber ball collection, but then, that&amp;#039;s what grandparents are for. Case in point: The light-up fish toy from &amp;quot;Finding Nemo on Ice&amp;quot; that my mother had given to my sons. The three of them had disappeared at intermission during the ice skating show, returning with ice cream, popcorn and a flashlight toy shaped like the angler fish that chases Nemo under the sea and, that day, on the ice. Funny, I didn&amp;#039;t know that we needed one of those. For weeks after the show, I found the fish flashlight on the kitchen table, on my desk, on the stairs and, ultimately, on the floor of my car, where toys go to die. I haven&amp;#039;t seen it since. But I have seen a resurgence in Legos, thanks to my mother-in-law, who has supplied my fourth grader with a few fresh batches. I had thought that we (and my vacuum) were done with Legos, but my son had put them on his Christmas list and, on Sunday morning, on the floor just outside the door to my home office, where it&amp;#039;s been slowing down my commute (and my vacuum) all week. I thought we&amp;#039;d be done with this by now. I thought that once we retired the toy box and found new homes for the Tonkas and the Hot Wheels, my house would be free of collections of things that bounce and spread and - whoopsies! - crunch under your foot. I thought we&amp;#039;d go straight from the Rescue Heroes to the Guitar Hero without any stops along the way. But now I understand that&amp;#039;s why they call them &amp;quot;tweens.&amp;quot; We are, indeed, between two stages of childhood. We are between the light-up sneakers and mac n&amp;#039; cheese shaped like SpongeBob, SquarePants, and the size 11 Nikes and the &amp;quot;Who ate all the leftovers?&amp;quot; We are between stages, and yet, we are in a stage itself where my kids still love to hang out with their grandparents, and their grandparents still love to buy them things that only kids truly love. We are also between vacuum bags, so I&amp;#039;d better add it to my shopping list. With all those rubber balls in the house and on the floor of my car, they&amp;#039;ll fill up fast. Who knows what they&amp;#039;ll come home with the next time they visit their grandparents. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/parenting/a20646/tween-toys/>