Toys

I have felt little inspiration to write lately. We are busy as always around here, but thinking (of anything other than surviving the day) seems beyond me at the moment. My amazingly wonderful, self sacrificing husband is putting in some brutal hours covering holidays for fellow employees, so I am manning the house solo morning to night. Needless to say, there is little time for extra's. This morning, however, I walked downstairs with a load of laundry and felt inspired.
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Toys.

This winter I rummaged through 5 years of toys and wittled them down to some necessities in order to 1) encourage more imaginative play, 2) discourage fighting as a result of toy over stimulation, 3) make clean up easier. After several goes, it was a process that lasted a few weeks, I had the right mix: Lego, Mega-Blocks, wooden train, cars, balls, tools, play mats. The garbage toys went in the garbage. The toys that were strictly clutter were donated, not surprisingly these were the noisy and too many buttons toys. Toys that were played with often, but had a lot of pieces were put in a cupboard in seperate boxes and are only accessible through trade. Yup, the kids are required to trade toys for toys. This works great. And has vastly improved all three areas I had in mind.

Lately, this week, however, the kids (twin2) has led the charge in busting the trade toy cupboard open. I have gone downstairs 5 times now and there are toys everywhere. It is at the point where toys are in wrong boxes, too many are available, and I am frantic to fling them all back in the closet as quickly as possible to keep the baby from choking on something. Alas, today was one of those toy busting mornings. Ug. The only good thing is that they are totally immersed in the toy break out while they are in the process and I get a bit of time without tantrums and fighting.

So, once my husband returns from the land of work, which also includes a renovation that he is now trying to organizing the completion of, I will head back downstairs and re-simplify.

Toys. Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em.