Christmastime with an 8-month-old meant...blockading the tree, trips to see Santa, and the question of whether or not an 8-month-old needed gifts. We want his birthday and Christmas to be special to him, but don't really want him to have a pile of plastic character toys under the tree, and dread the days when he'll be watching cartoons and falling victim to advertising aimed at his little mind and my wallet.

Also, the current smack-you-in-the-face environmental issue seems to be lead paint in children's toys. Having a little guy that likes to chew on everything, this is a concern for us. Maybe we're lucky that his favorite thing to play with is a plastic Solo cup from the kitchen. However, it was Christmastime and though he didn't know Christmas Morning from any other morning, we did want him to have some gifts to open.

We decided to buy some environmentally-friendly and hopefully lead-paint-free baby toys. We found two really cute ones - this pull along hippo by Melissa and Doug:

and this Skwish wooden toy by Manhattan Toys:

We also have a lot of recycled toys from friends that I hope we saved from a landfill. By the way what happens to all of those toys with lead paint? I suppose they end up as trash too! Anyway - you can find most of these wooden toys on Amazon or Learning Express.

Posted by jen at January 4, 2008 09:30 AM

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Posted by: stacy at January 7, 2008 11:50 PM

Posted by: stacy at January 7, 2008 11:51 PM

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