I’ve had a few Marines over the years tell me about how I need to be worried about China  because they’re taking over. While I’m sure its true, I don’t let it get me down too much.

But little did I know that China has already taken over my house! I know it’s probably common sense, but I didn’t realize the extent of it. You see Jones got this new world map that we put up on the wall in his playroom. He’s been obsessed with memorizing the countries on it, their flags, etc. He wants to find where Portugal is ’cause daddy lived there for a while, he wants to find where Ethiopia is ’cause that’s where his cousin Malak is from, etc. So in order to encourage this enthusiasm we started having him find some of his toys to see where his toys were made…well…it wasn’t a good idea ’cause every single toy we found was either made in China or Malaysia! Actually, in reality 9 out of 10 toys were made in China and that tenth toy was from Malaysia.

We don’t buy my children many toys and we try to only have them play with toys that challenge their brains to thinking creatively, use their imagination, etc. We thought that we were pretty conscious of what our kids played with. But as it turns out all of our toys were made by babies working in a sweat shop across the world, shipped across the world on a giant boat that pollutes the air and the ocean, is made with lead based paint, and is sending money across the world instead of to a local family owned business.* I’m not sure what our response to this will be, but I’m feeling like some research, evaluation, and new shopping paradigm is in order.

crap.

*      Ok, so maybe I haven’t actually researched all of this yet and it may or may not all be true. But after I do some research I’ll pound you down with the facts my friend!