Your Best Non-Toys

[Bloss]

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Congratulations Bloss! It must feel great to be a winner, I never win anything more than the box of bath salts at the school gala....!

I second everything you mentioned for the permanent obsessions - and the amount of money wasted on WET wipes that were then DRY because dd carefully pulled each one out of the box and randomly deposited in various places round the house leaving me to find as and when! Also keys, calculator, soap dish, plastic whisk, the button box, feather duster, the list just goes on doesn't it....?! The very first thing that made her giggle, at a couple of months old, was watching my Mum's 'fruit' ornaments jangling around on the kitchen wall - so much for cot mobiles!

At the moment I spend my life saying "Erm, where did you get that from?!" since hitting 18 months dd has discovered if you pull hard enough on any of the shiny handles dotted around the house it will open up a huge draw and you will discover things you only ever dreamed about...! Favourite items from draws include felt-tip pens - somehow she knows these make the best marks (instinct?) and wanders round drawing on her hands saying "ooo pretty, pretty, pretty!" Well, so far it's only her hands - tomorrow the world!

Our favourite at the moment is money. Give our child a handful of twopence pieces and he thinks he's rich! Then, add metal container (type you get expensive biscuits in at Christmas) in which money can be noisily deposited and you've got one happy kid!

Ornamental cobbles pushed through the gate at the bottom of the garden also creates minutes of fun. Chasing next doors cat. Pulling the flowers off the plants. Pulling all the cushions off the sofa and jumping on them. A blanket draped over the chairs under which a small person can hide. Breakfast cereal also makes a good substitute for sand and gravel in various trucks and diggers. Various tools, like a screw driver, hammer and rawl plugs, until Mummy discovers what he's found and tears across the room to wrestle it from his vice like grip just before he sticks said impliment through the computer monitor.

My son loves remote controls or mobile phones and will throw himself in the direction of these if they are in eye sight. Keys are another favourite and a wooden keyring of my mums. The dogs ears, tails and any hand fulls of fur he can grab. He loves emptying my makeup bag and and any bag he can grab.
Bloss - Well done, tell us how you go with it as I am looking to get a back pack and cant decide.

Like the others here, my son loves remote controls, other people's mobile phones (the quite convincing toy was discarded in a trice), parents' toiletries, his baby wipes box and sharp kitchen and garden implements.
He is also very keen on "ironing" (on our bath surround on a carefully laid out piece of loo roll); "sunbathing" (on the bath mat, which regularly turns up in strange places around the house), and "wiping". He spent 25 minutes cleaning the dining room table yesterday.
Also: coat hangers, small pebbles and the garden hose.
Very glad to hear it is not just him!

our best non-toy was the cat flap. Anything and everything was posted out (all the other non- toys, daddy's shoes, keys etc !). At least clearing up at night was easy, we just opened the back door !

Loo roll, tissues, wipes have been a permanent obsession from the begining ditto mobile phones (thank god I paid up the insurance on mine, I'm now on my 3rd handset ...)and yes Marina, the toy was spotted as a fake immediately despite it fooling many adults !

The 5 piece stainless steel steamer is usually spread around the floor as a drum kit but the number one hit is the pegs & peg bag. I accidently left it hanging within reach about 18 months ago and ever since it's been the top toy. They're used for anything from filling up my shoes/ the washing machine/ under the seat of her ride-on to clipping them together in strings or using them in place of teethers. Absolutely brilliant !

Congrats Bloss. My son is a definite toilet roll obsessive. I even gave him one for Christmas which lasted only a few minutes. He will hug one like a toy and has been known to escape from playgroup into the toilets and unravel all the rolls! We had to move our holder further up the wall in the bathroom.

Other things are bottles with snap on lids or indeed any kind of containers with lids. Belts from the highchair/pushchair. The latest is gravel which he likes to collect and fling into the house!

Chasing our cat, opening doors, and slamming them, particularly the washing machine door, cupboard doors, opening drawers and carefully emptying the contents into another drawer. Emptying the dishwasher -actually he is getting quite good at this ... all pans... soap and water and of course remote control, the phone, the computer ... the other day he was in fits of giggles just because the teatowel slid off the unit onto the floor so just goes to show anything can be amusing to a small child.

His favourite toy just now is a little rubber thimble - if you squeeze it you can make it stick to your face - he loves that.

Well done Bloss, it's such a good feeling when you win something, isn't it.
Ditto toilet roll and most definitely pegs, they have been the No. 1 toy from the word go. BUT we have our microwave in the dining room (kitchen too small to even swing a cat in) and hubby caught ds just as he was about to zap half a dozen pegs and blow the microwave up, so it is now switched off at the mains!
DS also has an obsession with nappy creams, he will always try and bite the lids off and so get a mouthful of yukky sudocrem or whatever, so we have to keep it well hidden at nappy change times.

Forgot to say, well done Bloss!
Jodee, my son once ate so much Sudocrem at a nappy change while I averted my eyes for .5 of a second that I could not sleep until I rang the out of hours service for advice. I don't think the GP should have laughed so much. How was a sleep-deprived first time mum to know that Sudocrem was non-toxic? You may be interested to know that it is an effective laxative.

Marina, no I DIDN'T know it was a laxative - that probably explains the nasty nappies I get after hubby has had him for a day - who knows what ds has been eating!

Congrats on the win Bloss and on the post. This is a top thread. Our son plays with very few of his toys but loves:
Noonoo (our Dyson)
Any telephone
Keys
Cutlery and kitchen utensils
Money (we have a small fortune posted through our floorboards)
Hairdryer
Saucepans
Tissue paper

Shoe boxes in my house!

The lids of shaving foam canisters - our two far prefer these to all the fancy bath toys they've been given. Also large plastic storage boxes (the kind that stack and are large enough for a child to sit in). Over the past few weeks these have been boats, trains, paddling pools, a primeval swamp (full of mud and plastic dinosaurs) and a hospital for Lizzie Rainbow (the Beanie Baby chameleon that my son has suddenly become attached to). They're also very good for turning upside down and jumping off (and can be used as steps to reach all sorts of interesting things...).

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The milk frother always causes a little distraction!I can see the attraction myself!

I can't believe no-one has mentioned labels! My 7 month old is obessed with the labels on her toys, or on clothes, cushions etc. I'm thinking of inventing a toy which only consists of labels.

My 2 yr old is obsessed with straps. By that, I mean the straps on her buggy, the ones on her highchair, and any similar. She will sit in her buggy for hours (obviously only when it's going nowhere in the porch - put her in it for hours in shops and she kicks up a big fuss!), and strap herself in, shout "Stuck Mum", get me to undo it, and then fasten it again. The same goes for her highchair, shopping trolleys, highchairs in cafes and so on. Thank goodness she hasn't learnt to undo them herself - could lead to many disasters!

Rosh, I'd forgotten about the label thing. Ours was obsessed with the labels too at about the same age. I think they must like the very small writing - or maybe when they're older we'll all be amazed by their uncanny knowledge of washing instructions!

Emsiewell.. My 20mth also is obsessed by straps - usually those on other people's pushchairs when we are out. Nothing I can do will stop her! I just have to hope that other mums are willing to share.

Rosh - so true! I suppose they are so much part of daily life that I had forgotten all about them! At 18m dd is still obsessed with pushchair, highchair etc - I wonder what's so hot about them?!

The floor cushions ring a bell. A favourite household item is one of our sofas. All the cushions come off to make a safe landing pad on the floor when the sofa is used as a trampoline to bounce on (and off). The kids also have a game called 'night night' where they snuggle down together under the sofa cushions rather than sitting on them (I don't quite get the attraction of this one, but it keeps them happy for ages). I keep thinking that maybe I should be trying to stop them climbing on the sofa and make them be a bit more civilized, but somehow I can't bring myself to do it - they seem to enjoy themselves so much.

Probably laundry baskets for us - usually boats or busses, but can be seats/dolly beds/steps/etc. - dds have no compunction about removing damp laundry from them to use either!

His big brother, as chaser, climbing frame, mattress and swing!