Necessary Evils

Can anyone walk into a toy store without being completely overstimulated? Or is it just me? All the ring-ding, flashing-light, battery-needing, brightly-colored plastic toys make me want to avoid such places and everything in them. Forever.

I figure when Lela and Cate are old enough to drive and have a job, they can go buy all the toys they want. But alas, we've had hoards of parents of young ones tell us that this stuff is baby magic and that it may, ironically, be the ticket to our sanity.

We're not there yet, but I guess we'll learn to cherish anything that keeps the kids occupied while we empty the dishwasher, even if it has the not-so soothing effect of a life-size fire truck driving through our living room. So while we've accepted that we won't be able to avoid such toys entirely, John and I have vowed to avoid them as much as possible until the girls can ask for them by name.

That said, we have reluctantly adopted some of the standard baby gear items complete with their wide selection of stuffed, dangling, rattle-y safari animals that hang above the girls heads. The floor gym is one of those items. No batteries, no music, and no flashing lights. Yet we've been avoiding it, too. Out of curiousity, I pulled out the floor gym yesterday and much to my surprise, this is what happened...

And we thought all they could do at this stage was sleep.