If you ever feel like a bad parent...

Make play dough. Your child will gasp and say "Mom!" and dig right in, giving you cheesy grins every 30 seconds. Ok, well, mine did anyway, and it boosted my confidence that I am actually doing a decent job raising our daughter. I mean, it is so simple that it is silly, but I'm serious.

There are a million recipes online for homemade play dough, and I recommend using one of them rather than buying it. It took all of 5 minutes to make (and it was kind of fun :P), and you know exactly what's in it...no weird chemicals or color additives. Here is the recipe I used, but I would imagine that they are all pretty basic.

 

We don't really have any "real" play dough toys, but the hammer and screwdriver from her tool chest, a spoon with holes in it, and a couple links worked great for the time being. I'll slowly find cool toys for playing, I'm too cheap to just go buy it. :)