Don't spend a lot of money on toys

My 9 month old has a ton of toys and lots of musical interactive toys. I bought these in hopes to keep Boo entertained so I could sneak away and get chores done. Boy was I wrong. They entertain me, and they entertain the older kids but have done little to entertain Boo for longer than 20 seconds. Kitchen utensils, keys, remote and cardboard boxes are only a few of the things that you will find laying around my house at any given time. Sure he may like them because he sees me use them but I think our babies are trying to teach us something. The other day I was at Big Lots letting the older kids spend their money and I was picking out Boos toy that he would spend his money on. I seen really cool toys that made noise and would make me want to play with them. Then I seen it it was a set, a shape thing where you match the holes to the right size block, stacking rings, and nesting cups. When we got home he played for 20 minutes.

Is he teaching me? Telling me that the "learning toys" that talk and sing to you are a waste of my money. Is he telling me he'd rather hear me tell him the crab is red instead of some weird guy that lives in the toy? Our babies clearly aren't interested in these things, so why do we buy them we pay a lot of money for them so we can have the next Einstein, but how did Einstein become so smart without them? So we can look like "good" parents? Nothing but the best for my baby, there's no amount of money I won't spend and spend we do and waste we have.

I have found Boos favorite toys are blocks that he loves to knock down and loves trying very hard to put them together. The nesting cups, a matchbox car he shouldn't have but found by mistake and I of course couldn't take it away because he was playing exactly how his big brothers played. Sure he has his own cars they're big, colorful, make clicky noises, jingle and if you pull them backwards they go all by themselves. He likes to chew on those he doesn't play "right" with them but give him a boring matchbox car and my living room becomes the Indianapolis 500. He also loves the cardboard diaper box he uses it as a walk behind, 17 years ago I spent $20 on one so my son could learn to walk he didn't like it till he could actually walk though. If I had known a cardboard box could do the trick I would have saved my money.

Do we just think that babies just like kitchen utensils and keys cause we play with them or are they giving us a hint, its not how much you spend its what they can do with it, they can actually play with these things not watch these things play.