Today, Riley and I had a great day. She was like my little sidekick. We went to Wellington Botanical gardens, and played, and ate leaves, and enjoyed the sunshine. We had a picnic lunch, we snuggled, we laughed, we had fun. We looked at flowers and stared up into the sky. Or, the tree branches.
We had a great time. And Riley's favorite part? Definitely eating the leaves.
Just pretend like those socks are the same color, k?
You've heard the phrase, "monkey see, monkey do," right? Well, that's Riley's motto at the moment. We stick our tongue out? She sticks hers out. We bang on her high chair? She bangs on her high chair. We blow raspberries?....
So there's a lot of raspberry blowing going on around here these days. But anyway, I got a little sidetracked from the original purpose of this post. Riley and I had a great time today. We explored and played outside with leaves and twigs. We roamed around the house, we read books, we played together, and basically ignored all her toys all day long. And my child has a lot of toys. Way too many toys, in fact. You see, sometimes I get all toy happy, and think about all the cool new toys there are out there, and how much fun we'd have playing with them with Riley.
But here's the thing. Having toys is great, and Riley does play with them when they're out there. But, I think I like it better when she doesn't have toys. When there aren't any toys, she explores, and seeks out things to play with. She crawls around, she pulls to stand, she goes from room to room. She finds things that become toys for her. It also forces me to facilitate activities with her. We go for walks, or go to the park or beach. We read books, we sing songs. We play games and I teach her things. And that just seems so much better than plopping her down on the floor to play with a bunch of plastic toys.
So today, I came up with a plan, largely inspired by Sarah, over at Becoming Sarah. First, I bagged up a whole bag of toys that either are (1) too baby-ish (2) kind of lame or (3) we have duplicates of. They are getting donated to people who need toys way more than our little Riley bug. Then, I sorted through the remaining toys, and divided them into 4 piles. There's about 5-6 toys in each pile that are each sufficiently different. I put them in bins, and we'll have one bin of toys out at a time. So Riley only has 5-6 toys out at a time, and we'll rotate the bins to keep them fresh and exciting. Less clutter for everyone, less over-stimulation and toy madness for Riley.
And with fewer toys, I get to spend more time coming up with fun activities for this little face. And I'm liking it a whole lot I tell ya.
But here's the thing. Having toys is great, and Riley does play with them when they're out there. But, I think I like it better when she doesn't have toys. When there aren't any toys, she explores, and seeks out things to play with. She crawls around, she pulls to stand, she goes from room to room. She finds things that become toys for her. It also forces me to facilitate activities with her. We go for walks, or go to the park or beach. We read books, we sing songs. We play games and I teach her things. And that just seems so much better than plopping her down on the floor to play with a bunch of plastic toys.
So today, I came up with a plan, largely inspired by Sarah, over at Becoming Sarah. First, I bagged up a whole bag of toys that either are (1) too baby-ish (2) kind of lame or (3) we have duplicates of. They are getting donated to people who need toys way more than our little Riley bug. Then, I sorted through the remaining toys, and divided them into 4 piles. There's about 5-6 toys in each pile that are each sufficiently different. I put them in bins, and we'll have one bin of toys out at a time. So Riley only has 5-6 toys out at a time, and we'll rotate the bins to keep them fresh and exciting. Less clutter for everyone, less over-stimulation and toy madness for Riley.
And with fewer toys, I get to spend more time coming up with fun activities for this little face. And I'm liking it a whole lot I tell ya.
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