How to Keep an 8-Month-Old Entertained for 30ish Minutes

You'll need the following:

1 muffin tin

12 things that are small enough to fit into a muffin tin, but too large for a baby to swallow

1 curious baby

In this particular instance I used:

bubble wrap*

foam sandpaper block*

padlock*

business card*

felt

glass ball

cardboard*

retractable tape measure

spool of thread*

soft tape measure

carabiner

crinkly bag of candy corn*

*When I put together my first muffin tin toy, Doodle wasn't really putting things in her mouth yet. So as long as I played with her and watched what she was doing, I didn't mind having some of these items. Now that she's in that stage where everything goes in her mouth, I've switched out many of the items for bigger things and things that won't hurt her mouth.

She loves it. She'll go through and pick up each item, examine it, try to eat it, determine that it's not edible, and move onto the next one. She'll sit quietly and pick through the items for probably 20 minutes.

And when Doodle isn't using it, it's a great makeshift cat bed.