The Toy Shop With No Barbies

Peanut got her first birthday present yesterday.

There's a toyshop close to where I work. I walked to it during lunch hour to have a look if they might have something. The shop was called Kleine Eland, which means The Little Elk in Dutch. The street where it stands is also called Elandgracht, or Elk Canal (can't imagine elk and canal being mentioned in the same sentence before myself). Inside they had the loveliest wooden toys; dollhouses with all the accessories, wooden trainsets, kitchen playsets, puzzles and boardgames, pedal cars. No Barbies, Dora, Disney characters or any sort of plastic toys with blinking lights and bleeping tunes. I'm in heaven!

We don't have a lot of space in the house for toys. So what toys we've got space for, they should have long play value (watching Elmo laughs for 2 full minutes doesn't qualify), made of high quality materials, well designed and well thought of, and most importantly fun in an enganging, instead of hypnotising, way (hence, empty shoe box is good, Baby Einstein is not).

I want Peanut to be the master (mistress?) of her toys, where what she's playing with them is not predetermined from the manuals or the marketing campaign, but because her imagination leads her to it. It's cool when her toys also teaches her something, but not everything she owns should be able to recite ABC's on demand. I especially don't want her to fall into the trap of the zealously marketed character toys, which bombards children from thinking they should have EVERYTHING that has Barbie/Dora/Pooh emblazoned on it, just because it's available. I know this will be an uphill battle as she gets older, but if she at least has the experience with playing with the alternatives, she's going to be savvy enough in knowing the difference.

Anyway, since I had been thinking of getting Cora some musical toys, I picked a crisp yet colourful looking wooden xylophone as pictured above for her birthday present.  I let her open the box the same day though. It wouldn't make a difference to her whether she receives it yesterday or next week.