Baby toys?

For those of you who don't have children yet, I'll let you in on a big parenting secret that will save you a lot of money when you take the plunge.

There is no such thing as baby toys.

There are lots of cute hunks of wood, plastic and plush marketed as baby toys of course, but these are really "parent" toys. Things for you to play with while the baby entertains him/herself by eating paint chips, and stale crackers out of the corners where the vacuum won't reach.

There's pretty much only one game at our house these days, and it's called "stack 'em up, knock 'em down." Guess which part of that is my job? Ragnarson is getting pretty quick at the knock 'em down part, so I rarely get more than three things stacked, and he's got quite an arm, so things fly pretty far. Really we should rename it "stack 'em up, knock 'em down, watch Mama crawl under the chair to get the blocks" because I think that's the part he really likes.

We have a set of stacking blocks, sturdy wooden nesting blocks that have been passed down to us through two previous children. Ragnarson is systematically destroying them. I have a "things that need to be glued" pile on the livingroom table, and there is usually at least one of these blocks awaiting repair.

The absolute best stacking "toy" of the moment is a bunch of stainless steel bowls, some that I bought at a garage sale specifically for Ragnarson, and some that used to be our salad bowls, but which are now part of the clangy, bangy pile in the playbox.

Being the frustrated artist that I am, I immediately saw the possiblity for sculpture a'la Brancusi's "Endless Column" and have been sort of obsessed about getting ALL bowls stacked up together...to the point where I caught myself holding Ragnarson at bay with one hand and trying to finish my tower with the other...see what I mean about "parent toys?" I finally managed it by making a secondary pile of things to distract Destructo Boy while I quickly stacked and photographed.Yeah, I am well aware of how pathetic this is.

And Ragnarson: such a critic.
Ragnar...yeah, I need to get out more.