Would you believe that we come inside Toys R Us, spend at least an hour and go out empty handed? I should add, come out with no one crying or screaming, “I want this or that!” ?

I can count by my fingers the toys that my daughter possess. Surely there are more bits, mostly free stuff from Kinder Chocolate Egg (she loves to assemble and collect them) or things she brings from her school during birthday parties. Other than that, we don’t buy her toys. To date, she has only one doll I bought with my mother in-law’s prodding.

Mean parents, you say but with the recent massive toy recall on toys made in China (aren’t 99% of the toys come from there?), the lesser, the better. On her 1st birthday, we had a small party. I bought her a dress. Some of my friends who came bought toys but little girl is not used to toys, she plays with plastic cups (the normal ones we use in the house) or I make ducks and penguins using face towels as she loves it very much or sometimes we just sing and dance and make stories.

On her 2nd birthday we got her something big. She is very active and loves to go to the park but the winter season prevents us from doing so. So we got her this so she could burn all her energy inside our warm room (in Japan):

So how do we survive without toys?

We read, a lot. I play with her, whenever I can. I go down on the floor, I crawl, I run, sing action songs, I do stunts for her, lol! In other words, we (mostly I) are her toys and amazingly and thankfully she is very much happy and contented with that!

She still brings home toys from birthday party giveaways but mostly, the toys just gather dust in one corner of our house.

I am thankful for the energy that we have to spend time with our child. Thankful that she is not craving for toys and don’t go ballistic everytime we go out shopping. She enjoys going to toy shops and plays with the sample things there but since we never took any toy to pass through the cashier, she does not demand anything. I don’t know until when this will last but I am thankful that she is not giving us headaches on impulsive buying now.