Toothpicks and a Cheese Shaker

My latest activity has been to get The Bubb to put flat toothpicks into a parmesan cheese shaker. No, really, he LOVES it.

Perhaps some background info is needed...I use hair pins to hold my bangs back sometimes when I am doing a lot of sewing. Well before I go to bed I take them out and put them on my night stand. My night stand is not 'normal' - it is pretty much an outdoor patio table for one (found at IKEA) that I love. But it has some holes in the top (totally intentional, it is part of the design). anyway. The Bubb loves to take the hair pins and stick them through the holes (and scratches the night stand a bit in the process).

I decided that I needed to get him to stop doing this. And yes the easy solution is not to put my hairpins there, well, they are everywhere and it is much harder to change my habits at this point rather than redirect him...so I thought that I need to find something else with holes that he could stick things in, be cheap, be small, and somewhat bordering on a little unsafe (no I don't worry about these things, but incase others see this idea and decide to try - there are probably potential dangers) because then it would hold his attention.

The solution: a parmesan cheese shaker would act as the "holes" and I was at first thinking q-tips but he likes to stick those in his ears and nose, so I remembered seeing flat toothpicks at the store when I was looking for regular toothpicks and thought to myself, who would ever want these, and so now a few years later, I do! (shaker is from Target, toothpicks from Safeway)

Well I put them out in front of The Bubb and he understood immediately and spent the next half hour cramming as many as he could into the cheese shaker.

And then he would pick it up and say "shake shake shake". I love him so much sometimes. Sometimes when he is helping me get ready in the morning he sees the hairpins and I redirect him to this activity. He actually asks to do this now and has been leaving my nightstand alone the past few weeks aside from turning the light on and off (another favorite activity).

We've now progressed from one toothpick

to two toothpicks

to more toothpicks

to total chaos

Note to self: Only give him a few, not the whole box. I love that he is so easily entertained and enraptured by the simplest things sometimes.

Oh! and progress on ABC recognition for those who like to know these things. He now knows: A B C D E F H I K L M N O P Q R T U V W Z and is still working on G J S X Y. I think he knows G but it sounds like E when he says it.