Three questions to ask before buying more toys

This is the current state of the family room off of the kitchen, and the toys that occupy that space:

What you likely see are toys everywhere. Blocks, a fishing pole, sunglasses, a truck, and a piece of crumpled up green paper. I’m not entirely sure why the green paper is there, but everything else is definitely toys.

Now let me show you what Little L sees:

The smaller dump truck and the sunglasses are a forklift. Obviously.

The fishing pole and the larger truck make a wrecking ball. Duh!

And the blocks are really a school bus and a police car.

We spend countless hours building and tearing down houses made of blocks, building small cars out of blocks, and toppling rectangular blocks like dominoes. And the beep-beep noise coming from the forklift is a telltale sign that construction is underway.

We have so many toys, but the ones that Little L enjoys most are the simple ones. And I’m pretty sure he loves these toys the most because I love playing with them too. It’s an absolute joy to see the ideas he comes up with.

He’s been putting sunglasses backwards on trucks for quite some time now and I kept thinking, “Oh, sweet baby. That’s not how trucks wear sunglasses.” When I finally asked him about it and he told me he was making a forklift, I was so impressed. His whole face lit up when I told him that.

I’m sad to say that I cringe internally when Little L asks to play with the power tools I got him for Christmas. Although the whole setup does make for a good photo op, there’s just not a lot you can do with a plastic screwdriver.

But with the blocks, possibilities are endless. I get to build and he gets to destroy. And The Dot gets to take the blocks out of the box and put them back into the box. And do it again and again and again and again. It’s her thing.

With that said, the next time I’m tempted to buy another plastic present for him, I’m going to ask myself these three questions:

1. Will this toy inspire creativity?
2. Am I going to have fun playing with this?
3. Is it better than blocks?

If the answer to any of the above questions is “no,” then I am going to save my money, which in the big scheme of things is his money because, yeah, college. I’m pretty sure he won’t be taking those plastic tools with him to college. But the blocks will still be around ♥