a $.70 toy

I made Levi a toy--it cost me 70cents.  I used a empty peanut butter jar (incidentally, I've fallen in love with peanut butter without anything added, but it's really hard to find and I've been having to get expensive organic peanut butter!  Until I saw that my local grocery store grinds their own and it's way cheaper--score!) and filled it with water.  Then I added some thrift store beads ($.40) and sequins($.30).  The gold paint on the sequins came off after awhile underwater, so now there are clear sequins and glittery water.  I'm betting it's because Dillon told me that his son shouldn't play with glitter.

He wasn't terribly interested in it until this past week.  He's actually playing with his toys with a little more interest and attention span these days.  I'm pretty excited he likes this toy--except that it rolls.  And generally not in the same direction as my son.  He will get better at moving around soon though!

In general I think I have a minimalistic view on toys.  (Now, I understand that I only have a 4 month old and will probably eat my words in a few months or years, but this is where I'm at for the moment)  I like the idea that we will have fewer, higher quality toys in our house.  And by quality, I mean semi-educational, multi-use, & imagination-stretching.  So rather than having a plastic disney figurine that makes a noise when you push a button, I'd like to have more generic looking dolls that my son can have make whatever noise he wants.  Blocks can be whatever he wants (look, it's a car!  Wow, now it's a spaceship!  A castle!)  Pieces of fabric can be capes, band-aids, shopping bags.  You get the idea.  If you can say "what does it do?" and have only one or two answers, it's not the most ideal toy for us!

I saw somewhere a person liked to have one of five categories: art, pretend play, books, gross motor, and music.

That being said, we have quite a few of those toys in our house right now already.  And Levi generally enjoys them just as much as he enjoys homemade toys or anything he can stick in his mouth, really.  So I think in the future it'll be interesting to see where we end up as far as the toy collection in our house goes.  For now I like wood toys.

One final thought: Thank goodness we have a son because I am highly committed to keeping disney princesses out of my home. They just seem to take over a little too much.