Who needs toys?

I've come a long way from the days when I actually thought twice before giving Isaac "my" stuff as playthings. Like many parenting compromises of position, this change was born of equal parts desperation and pragmatism.

Isaac still likes to play with phones, although these days he's more fond of pushing buttons than chewing antennae. On a number of occasions he's accidentally called people whose numbers were stored in the phone's memory. He most often calls my parents, whose speed-dial setting is 3 on my mobile phone -- I think he holds down the 3 with his thumb when he holds the phone in his right hand.

So he can use speed-dial, but I thought it impossible that he could dial a real phone number -- I hear a lot of "This call cannot be completed as dialed" emerging from the phone. But I forgot about the laws of probability -- if one baby jabs away at a telephone keypad for five minutes every day for three months, a real phone number is bound to emerge. Isaac has independently dialed the numbers of at least two people who are total strangers to us: a Col. Mark Wagner, and a sales rep named Heather at Bally Total Fitness in Blackhawk/Danville. Thank goodness he got voicemail in both cases!

To avoid his enlisting in either the military or a gym, I've decided that a safer toy is the classic saucepan-and-lid combo. Craig has been out of town again, and I've found it a struggle to cook dinner alone with a hungry, needy, whining boy clutching my knees. Out of desperation I handed him a pan with a lid. Oh man, he loved it! Can you believe it was the very first time he had played with one -- why didn't I think of it sooner? It entertained him for 15 minutes straight on the first night, and nearly that long on the second night. Lid on; lid off. Repeat. Object in pan, lid on; lid off, object out of pan. Repeat. The percussive properties of both pan and lid against concrete floor were also popular, and totally worth it to me.