Toys set free!

When kids grow up, you'd think that they grow out of all their toys.....well, you'd wish....! To be fair...they do grow out of a few but there's always a toy that is too close to their heart to give away. My seven year old who should have grown out of his indoor toys a long time ago, at times still lays out his train tracks turning his room into a mini-Island of Sodor! You can imagine how annoyed I'd be when I return home from work to find every inch of floor space in his room covered with tracks.....set up by a kid who's way past the age limit meant for such toys! Abhay  still had so many toys meant for toddlers and pre-schoolers that we got him to reluctantly donate a few to a nearby orphanage. But there were still many of his branded toys (which took up most of the shipping space as we were foolish enough to assume that they were not available in India!) that we'd found it difficult to get rid of, partly because of the reluctance on the part of everyone from Abhay to Abhay's grandma to let go of toys that have cost a pretty penny plus the added discomfort in being mistaken when you offer hand-me-downs to known friends and relatives. Anyway, over the weekend, we managed to find a suitable home for some of our prized toys! Surprisingly, Abhay willingly gave away his Vrtech laptop, leap frog word prompter and the antique looking wooden railway tracks to his younger cousins, genuinely pleased that the toys he once so enjoyed would now make someone else happy! But all said and done, he wasn't yet ready to make that call for his Thomas set! :-(

 

Today's prompt for the 30 books in 30 days challenge being "Toys", I could not but agree with Bubbleink that Mo Willems' Knuffle Bunny series couldn't have been more appropriate. Since I've already featured Knuffle Bunny earlier on Onestoryaday, I was looking for something else but I couldn't lay my hands on any book appropriate for Abhay. But since books like Knuffle Bunny are the very reason I started blogging on Onestoryaday and the third book in the series particularly being Abhay's favourite (which took minimal shipping space), we decided to revisit the book and repost on Onestoryaday as an exception! My last post on Knuffle Bunny was three years ago, and the very fact that I still read it to Abhay is only proof of its enduring theme and how it works on so many layers! In fact, Abhay is now all the more able to relate to the sentiment behind "Knuffle Bunny free -An unexpected diversion ". As Trixie finally comes to terms with the loss of her Knuffle Bunny on the flight to her grandparents' place, she accidentally finds it on her flight back in the same place as she had left it.  While she rejoices in this reunion, she also realizes that it's time to move on and let someone else more deserving enjoy the company of Knuffle Bunny and places him in the hands of a bawling baby seated behind them, with her proud parents looking on! So Knuffle Bunny who had been an inseparable part of Trixie's life now becomes another's inseparable comfort toy! Today as we read this book, Abhay declared that he doesn't need toys anymore as he is happy to have his parents...... To which my husband retorted "So that we can buy him more toys!" :-)