The Sea of Toys
I'm posting this photo because my friend Cara recently lamented how her living room been overtaken by toys. She (like me) had promised herself she would not let the toy mania stake claim to the entire house. It would be nicely and neatly confined to the child's room or a small area of the living space. Seems easy enough. I mean, how many toys can a baby really enjoy and use? Last year my guess would have been maybe ten or so toys. That seemed sufficient - at least it did when I was pregnant and too naive to understand the toy accumulation process.
My hope of having few toys (all of which would be wooden, quaint, and educational, of course) seems to be diminishing with each passing month. This is the current state of our living room. We've moved the coffee table over to the side of the room and laid out a quilt to cover the rug (and absorb any bottle spillage and crushed cheerios). We also pulled up the couch seat cushions so that she has a little ledge to pull up on and put her toys. She's in L-O-V-E with standing these days and we needed to create same safe places to pull up on. Anna just crawls from coffee table to couch to book shelf to window back to couch again every day, all day long, picking up toys and shaking them and then restarting the crawling route again.
I guess in the end we just had to surrender to the reality of the toys. As much as you try to keep things minimal, they seem to multiply anyway. I'm not sure it's really a battle worth fighting either. After all, you never know what toy will be her one true love or prompt her to say her first word as she crawls toward it.
In the meantime, here's what our home looks like. Enjoy.
I'm posting this photo because my friend Cara recently lamented how her living room been overtaken by toys. She (like me) had promised herself she would not let the toy mania stake claim to the entire house. It would be nicely and neatly confined to the child's room or a small area of the living space. Seems easy enough. I mean, how many toys can a baby really enjoy and use? Last year my guess would have been maybe ten or so toys. That seemed sufficient - at least it did when I was pregnant and too naive to understand the toy accumulation process.
My hope of having few toys (all of which would be wooden, quaint, and educational, of course) seems to be diminishing with each passing month. This is the current state of our living room. We've moved the coffee table over to the side of the room and laid out a quilt to cover the rug (and absorb any bottle spillage and crushed cheerios). We also pulled up the couch seat cushions so that she has a little ledge to pull up on and put her toys. She's in L-O-V-E with standing these days and we needed to create same safe places to pull up on. Anna just crawls from coffee table to couch to book shelf to window back to couch again every day, all day long, picking up toys and shaking them and then restarting the crawling route again.
I guess in the end we just had to surrender to the reality of the toys. As much as you try to keep things minimal, they seem to multiply anyway. I'm not sure it's really a battle worth fighting either. After all, you never know what toy will be her one true love or prompt her to say her first word as she crawls toward it.
In the meantime, here's what our home looks like. Enjoy.
(toy shelves are back to the right, a bit hidden behind the pillows)
1 comment:
Isn't it amazing what we'll do now for these two foot tall creatures?
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