mirrors and rattles and gloworms, oh my!

A ha! I finally figured out what all those baby toys are for! It took a few pages of advice from "What to expect the first year" and the arrival of a gloworm to spark the ephiphany. Now Z's crib and changing table are adorned like Christmas trees.

From "What to expect the first year"

The sense of sight.
Many objects, toys among them, can stimulate baby visually:

• Mobiles.
• Other things that move. ... Take a field trip to a pet shop and position baby in front of a fish tank or bird cage to view the action.
• Stationary objects. Babies spend a lot of time just looking at things. This isn't idle time, but learning time.
  
• Mirrors. Mirrors give babies an ever changing view, and most love them. (They especially enjoy looking at and socializing with the "baby" in the mirror, having no clue yet who that baby is.)

The senes of hearing.
...

• Rattles and other toys that make gentle sounds. You don't have to wait until your baby is able to shake a rattle independently. In the early months, either do the shaking yourself, put the rattle in baby's hand and help shake it, or attach a wrist rattle. Coordination between vision and hearing will develop as ababy learns to turn toward sound.
  

Social development.
...
Toys that help babies with social development are stuffed animals, animal mobiles, and dolls. Though it will be many months before they'll be able to hug them and play with them, even at this point they can and do begin to socialize with them -- just watch an infant converse with animals prancing ont he crib bumpers or revolving on a mobile.

So...that's what all those toys are for... sweet!