the play box

All the toys in the sink

A few weeks ago I bleached/cleaned every single last one of Asher's toys. (Yes I'm a little bit of a clean freak- but only about "sick" germs -vrs dirt, grass, etc) Anyway, this is beside the point.  I must say that I was pretty pleased to discover that ALL of them -pictured above- fit into one side of the sink!

Why am I so pleased?
Because it's my goal to not smother him with toys. I want to give him room to be creative with what he has. -Not that we will deprive him of toys, but we will limit the amount of them. He so happily entertains his own little babyness for nearly 45 minutes at a time, give or take. He will play with or chew a couple of toys, then crawl around and stand and walk from thing to thing. -Usually talking or yelling rather LOUDLY. (man boys are SO much louder than girls)!

We keep one small basket downstairs of little things for him to play with; and he's more interested in climbing, crawling, or trying to get the remote controls. (how do they always know that the one you gave them is the play one, even if it used to be the "real" one)?!

Upstairs we have a little toy bin next to the chair, and he enjoys taking all the toys out, plays a bit and then moves on to other things around the room.

Checking out one toy at a time

The cupboards are filled with "toys"

Asher loves playing in the kitchen while I work. Things like bowls, spoons, pots, empty jugs, etc are among his favorite forms of entertainment. Chewing, banging, rolling, unloading...  I love that he doesn't have to have toys to be play/learning.

He is fascinated with babies. He squeals with delight at the
sight of them, wants to kiss them, and touch them.

He likes books. I've hit several garage sales this summer and expanded his book collection. I highly recommend this form of purchasing books. I want him to be around books from a very young age, and I don't want to have to take them away from him because after he was done looking at (or kissing, as pictured above) the pictures he decided to gum a page or two. At .25 or .50 cents I'm ok with it.  We read while he plays sometimes too. I want him to love books, and to always have access to them.

Imagination development is an essential quality that often gets stifled by stuff in todays culture.
My theory (so far) is buy a few high quality things and let him loose, to learn to play and entertain and learn on his own. For gifts we hope to give him things like music classes, or swim lessons, or tumbling classes, or books rather than stacks of nearly unused toys in every room.

We'll see how long this theory lasts.
What's your theory or thoughts?