Creative Play

I have read and have been told by many that too many toys does not benefit children.  Thinking back of my childhood and hearing stories from my parents, I agree that a lot does not mean better.  However, we nowadays get swept away by all the toys around us.  We buy our kids stuff we think they need and they receive a ton from family and friends.

Here Cristiano and Adriano have very little. We didn't want to bring any toys with us because we didn't want to use up space in the suitcases and because we didn't know what to expect when we got here as to what the kids would need.  Although I mentioned in a previous post that Cristiano misses his toys, amazingly he has been so cute at creating things to play with or ways to entertain himself.  He uses the suitcases as cars. He rides them, stands on them, and rolls them going "vroum vroum".  He also lays down a clothes hanger and pretends he is standing in a restaurant and serves us pizza and humus.  Not sure how he came up with the combination, but he only serves pizza and humus.  He also made himself a kitchen glove out of a bag. Oh and he also rides in his brother's walker and pretends its a car.  No need to buy him a real one I guess!   Watching him is very entertaining for us.  I love seeing him be so creative.  I even suggested to Michael that he should decorate one of the suitcases with him to make it look more like a car.  It will be something nice for the two of them to do together.

The cleaning crew threw out the bag he was using as a glove so in this picture he was trying to make a glove with this new bag. It was just too big.

One more interesting thing about him is that he sings almost all day.  He makes up his own songs with things he is doing.  Like yesterday Adriano was eating a cookie so Cristiano started singing about Adriano eating the cookie.  He also sings songs he knows.  One of his favourite is Old McDonald, who in Cristiano's world only has chickens.  According to Michael, it is a chicken farm that Old McDonald owns.

Adriano just enjoys crawling around and chewing on anything he can find or he just follows Cristiano around. Less toys also encourages them to play together for entertainment.

Cristiano likes to jump in bed with Adriano when Adriano wakes up from his nap

He was sitting on Adriano's legs and moving him forward...lol

One of the coolest activity Cristiano has is looking out the view of our room.  We are on the 17th floor and have a view of the city.  From our room we see a golf course, a race track, a building in the process of being built, the sky train, tuk tuks, motorcycles, buses, cars, people and lots of buildings and lights.  Both Cristiano and Adriano love sitting by the windows and watching.  Cristiano has even memorized some items and asks me about them when they are not around.  Like tonight he was pointing out that the water was turned off on the construction site but that it was not turned off on the golf course.  It's like he has his own mock up city, but in real life action!

All in all they are having fun with what is around them.