Slum Baby
Baby tastes vary as they grow up. I realize that their needs for mental stimulation get tougher and tougher as they grow. You know what elese? Their television show choices also vary.
Let me describe a typical AJ day. He wakes up, goes around the house, going through most ‘toy’ boxes and collects his favorite toys from those boxes. he spends time mulling over one, considers it deeply (his head tilted to one side in intense concentrations) and deems it unworthy for playtime so he puts it back (or leaves it on the floor, depends if I’m looking). With an armful of toys he waddles over to his favorite empty box and shoots all his toys inside. He then climbs inside the box and stays there for a good 2 hours just playing.
I don’t know where he got the habit to stay in a confined place to play. I call it “slumming”. Maybe he sees kids doing it on the streets during the rare times we walk around the more congested area of our city.
Today, however, he rejected every toy he held with a barely concealed ‘tsk’. It thrilled me that he wants other toys to play with but the frugal mom inside me is worried. There are some toys that we just bought, and they became favorites for a day or two, then set aside now.
Must do retail therapy for AJ, I tell myself, while opening a browser window to Buy.com’s weekly sale. Then I opened another browser and looked for parental support at Minti. After all, maybe this is just a phase. Maybe the hundreds of toys we bought for him before will still be loved after a while.