• Parents has a slogan that Jack and I both love: When toys do less, kids do more. We're very into imaginative play and wooden or cloth toys without batteries or beeps, and especially in keeping plastic to a minimum. This is why companies like Imagiplay, which I plugged a few months ago, are so very exciting to me. Plastic has its place, of course, like the fun mammut kids' table at IKEA that I think would be great for him to do art on someday soon.
• The more I think about how advertisers are out to get him, the more I become convinced of the value of not branding our kid with t-shirts that proclaim the store in which they were purchased. This is harder to accomplish than I would have thought.
• NPR had a great story a few weeks ago about the value of old-fashioned play (i.e., unstructured play that promotes imagination, working together, and ultimately, self-regulation). I was just reminded of it while I was scanning Mothering Magazine online, which I'd never heard of before but which echoes a lot of my values in raising Kent.
• A Christmas tradition I meant to start this year but which I didn't get around to involves giving money to charity in Kent's name, to supplement a few choice presents and reinforce the idea of giving when he receives something. We could make it be a birthday tradition, or even better, both. When he's old enough to choose, I'd also love it if he helped pick the charity.
• Books are becoming an increasingly important part of our everyday life. We cannot have enough board books right now! That has led me to my new favorite type of exploration: used book stores. The one in Baton Rouge isn't so hot — they have a few shelves of kids' books piled up in no particular order, with very narrow aisles that are mostly filled with romance novels and other ephemera. I had a couple of great finds a few weeks ago, but I don't expect to find much there when I visit. We found Humpus Bumpus near Alpharetta this morning, though, and got three great books (one for now, two for his birthday), and besides finding some fun books, we had a lot of fun playing on the big rug in the kids' room and then exploring the gallery of local art in the next room. I told the woman at the register that I wished I lived here so that I could visit more often! I'm planning a trip to another bookstore in Roswell tomorrow or Saturday. Used book stores allow us to get a lot of books for not very much money (since the board books at the library are in terrible shape and would be even worse after Kent got done with them), and it also allows us to get use out of something that someone else used and then discarded, without anything having to end up in a landfill. Great solution all around, I say.

Labels: Kent

• posted by erica 4/03/2008 12:09:00 PM
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