The simpler things in life

This is my daughter. At 13 months, she has more toys than a Toys R Us. In fact, she has so many toys, that her toys have been given their own room so she can make as much of a mess as she wants to and I don't have to worry about cleaning up. What does she love to play with? Anything that is not a toy.

My child makes a toy out of candy wrappers, tupperware, hair ties, and little pieces of paper that she finds on the ground. Her greatest victories are when she crawls around the living room or kitchen and finds that little something that you dropped under the recliner, behind the bookshelf, or any other place adult hands can't reach. She will find your dirty sock and drag that thing around the house like it is a new toy.

Her new favorite morning activity since outgrowing her Johnny Jump Up is to follow me into the bathroom as I'm getting ready for work, and open my bottom drawer to play with whatever she can find. Her favorite toy in the drawer is a gallon bag that I keep a bunch of random stuff in. This is a bag that I throw my odds and ends into - the stuff I don't want just laying around the bathroom. In the bag, there are old bobby pins, 6 different tubes of travel toothpaste, toothbrush covers, Tums, deoderant, and extra contact cases. To me, the bag is full of a bunch of random junk that I don't want to throw away. To Haley, this bag is full of fun toys.

Every morning while I get dressed and put on my makeup, Haley crawls over to the drawer, pulls out the gallon bag, and dumps its contents on the bathroom floor. She then proceeds to spread everything that fit so nicely into a gallon bag all over the bathroom floor while she plays who-knows-what with my bag of junk. I never stop her because she's having so much fun with such simple little objects and it only takes me a couple of minutes to scoop everything back in the bag in preparation for her to scatter them across the floor the next day. With a whole room full of toys that light up and make noise, she'd rather sit on the bathroom floor and play with my travel toothpastes. If only the rest of us could appreciate the simpler things in life, I have a feeling the world would be a much happier place.