Who needs a Nintendo Wii?

In a world where we as parents frequently feel pressured to provide more and more expensive toys for our children, it never ceases to amaze me how much fun a child can have with a well cultivated imagination. Case in point, when Erin was about 1-1/2 years old, Laureen and I decided to purchase a rug for her play area in our tiny, one-bedroom apartment in Verona, NJ. We went over to our local Target, picked out a very kid-friendly rug, and brought it home. We spent the next 1/2 hour or so setting up Erin's play area (unroll the rug, move her little Dora couch and lamb chair onto the carpet, set up her book case, carefully arrange her plethora of toys). When we had finished, we felt we had created a very enticing play area just for Erin, giving her a little of her own space in our already cramped home. When sitting in the middle of that rug, Erin was immersed in a world of toys and books all her own, an oasis of childhood pleasure for her to indulge in. Except that Erin had little to no interest in her newly created space. You see, she had taken a shine to something else that was distracting her from fully appreciating her new space. Erin was enamored with the cardboard tube that the rug had been rolled up on. Yes... a 5' cardboard tube had derailed our carefully laid plans. She carried that tube around for the rest of the day, banging into walls, knocking over knick knacks, and sharing lots of little private, toddler laughs with it. And her romance with the tube didn't end that day... it carried over for months. Whenever we brought the tube out from its home behind the CD racks, it would elicit squeals of joy from Erin, who would promptly start racing around the apartment carrying the tube that was twice as tall as she was. Well, at least she eventually warmed up to her play area.

More recently, Erin has been entertaining herself in a new way. Mind you, Erin has a room full of toys, books, crayons, and musical instruments. But all of this is frequently ignored as Erin plays with "The Fingers". "The Fingers" are, strangely enough, what Erin calls her fingers (imagine that). Except that they are more than just fingers. They are little people who wander around the huge world that is our little house, experiencing all kinds of adventures; from the mundane (shopping for groceries at Shop-rite) to the harrowing (stuck in the quicksand on the "Yellow Planet"). Sometimes the fingers have names (Poc and Boc seem to the most popular). Other times, they are simply "The Fingers". They always have very high-pitched, shrill voices, and almost never talk softly. And of course, as mentioned in an earlier posting to this blog, they like to sing "The Underpants Song", which incidentally, has many new verses (they are not always Mommy's underpants anymore... now almost everyone Erin knows has made an appearance in a verse of "The Underpants Song").

So, as Erin grows up, something I already instinctively knew is reinforced simply by watching our little girl. Life is not about "things". Erin shows me that regularly, as she eschews her bins and boxes of toys in favor of the limitless bounds of her own imagination.