Who needs parents when you have boppies

Toren entertained himself (and me) for a good 45 minutes on the boppy and play mat:

So, on a related side note, I’m not a big fan of buying kids lots of toys. To date, I have bought him a whopping ZERO toys. But, here’s the irony – two things I did buy him are his favorite toys: burp cloths (like the one you see in this video) and the rings you saw in a previous video. Granted, Debi and I both bought him the burp cloths, but I purchased the rings.

Now, you may be saying to yourself, “Ryan, what do you have against toys? And why are trying to claim that you haven’t bought your son any toys when clearly the rings are toys?”

Here’s how I can say that: I bought the rings to hold the toys other people bought him to his play mat. So, I bought the rings as tools, not as toys. Semantics, yes. But technically true.

Now for the shocker: He likes the tools as toys! From what I have heard, this tends to be the case with babies – they’d rather play with boxes, pots and pans, and keys than with baby toys. So, what do I have against baby toys? Um, pragmatism! If babies don’t play with them, why buy them? It seems like you can spend thousands on toys for kids. I say, why bother if they’re just going to play with non-toys?

Before you complain and accuse me of neglecting my child and hindering his development, I should note that Toren’s Grandmother and, to some degree, his mother, don’t really share that sentiment. And, since they know I’m not going to buy Toren toys (with the exception of blocks/legos), they have been trying to compensate. Also, friends have given us a lot of toys for him. So, Toren has toys.