Indoor Activities For Children

Baby Read-Aloud Basics

The Toddlers Busy Book, highly praised

Brain Quest cards

Baby Play and Learn

Baby Days: Activities, Ideas, and Games for Enjoying Daily Life with a Child Under Three

Pretend Soup and Other Real Recipes: A Cookbook for Preschoolers & Up (wonderful)

Perhaps used in conjuction with The Learning Tower, $169.99:

Check out A.J.’s post Bonding Without Toys: 10 Interactive Activities For Your Toddler and You

Amy Karol at Angry Chicken (click on the “toy” category in the sidebar) and Jessica at Kerflop frequently post incredible kid’s activites.

Also see Kiddley, an ever-changing round-up of crafty things to do with children.

If you have the space, playhouses, playstands, and teepees are great fun (here’s a great pattern for sewing a teepee), as are Little Tykes classics like this slide.

 Quiet Hours Toys sells a variety of handmade, non-beeping children’s toys.

Here’s a recipe for constarch goop.

Morning Sickness Aids

 

erbavia Quease-Ease Lip Balm, $9

Red-e-Bag, $15.95

Sea Bands, $9.95

Preggie Pops, $3.75

Various supplements

Chefs Describe How To Get Children To Eat Well

From the New York Times:

“Historically, there was no such thing as children’s food,” said Andrew F. Smith, who teaches culinary history at the New School in New York. “Babies would eat what adults ate, chopped up, until Gerber created baby food in 1927.” “Children’s meals” didn’t exist until the McDonald’s Happy Meal came along in the late 1970’s, Smith said, and only when snack-food producers concluded that their real market was children did they start sponsoring events and advertising in the 1950’s.

The Chef’s Advice:

1. Make your children eat at the table from a very young age. Jody Adams, the chef at Rialto in Cambridge, Mass., said that her children – Oliver and Roxanne – never had highchairs. “It was really hard, because 2-year-olds throw food. But I saw the benefit in treating the dinner table as something that was important and that everyone had to participate in.”

2. Make them eat what you do, even if you have to purée it. “If we ate butternut squash and carrots, so did they,” Matheson said, “and sometimes with fish. I just really thinned it with cooking water.” Grant Achatz, the chef and owner of Alinea in Chicago, treated his 4-year-old to a 10-course dinner. “He didn’t finish everything, but he tried every course, which included white truffles, crab, bison,” he said. Do not feel compelled to top this.

3. Pack lunches fashioned from leftovers. “If we go for Thai food,” said Naomi Hebberoy, a chef and owner of the Gotham Building Tavern in Portland, Ore., her daughter, August, “takes pad Thai the next day.”

4. Eschew Baggies filled with Goldfish. (Car rides are exempt.) “If kids are hungry, they’re going to eat,” Dolich said. “If you fill them up on Bugles, they won’t.”

5. Buy them the most expensive chocolate you can afford. Who craves Ho Hos when they’ve had Scharffen Berger? I do. But I wasn’t raised on the good stuff.

Nursery Extras

By Order of the Management series ($51).

Gummi Crib Rail

Wooden animal instrument toys $8.95 apiece.

Foogo by Thermos, the insulated sippy cup

Flor tiles for kids 

Wheely Bugs for 18 months+ are $69.00, 9-18 months is $59.00. 

Minimalist Baby Blocks, $27

wallpaper from Graham and Brown that you write or draw on yourself

Baby Teeth Care

Moxie writes:

The children of mothers who use xylitol toothpaste and/or gum in the first two years of their children’s lives have fewer dental problems up through age five than kids whose moms don’t use any xylitol products. So the first thing you could do is switch to xylitol toothpaste yourself (there are some great brands online like Squigle and Epic, and I love Tom’s of Maine CinnaMint flavor) or start chewing gum with xylitol.

But even if you don’t use xylitol toothpaste your kids can. Tom’s of Maine makes a liquid toothpaste  for kids with xylitol that comes in a few flavors (our favorite is grape), and it’s in Gerber baby toothpaste, too. For a 9-month-old you want to use just a teeny bit of the toothpaste with some water. You can use an extremely soft-bristled brush, or one of those things that fits over your index finger with little nubbly parts that lets you brush by sticking your finger inside the baby’s mouth. (Be warned, though, that if your baby has a tooth and chomps down the soft toothbrush will not protect your finger and it will hurt like you didn’t think possible).

If your baby is too young for toothpaste or a brush (gags or won’t open mouth or otherwise resists), you can get Spiffies xylitol wipes to wipe their little baby teeth. They’re individually-packaged wipes (the size of wet wipes) coated in a xylitol solution. They taste like very mild grape, and you just use them to wipe the surfaces of all the teeth and gums.

If you nurse to sleep and can’t imagine waking up your baby to brush, you can still brush or wipe with Spiffies right before you nurse. Some of the xylitol will stay on the teeth, and since the nipple squirts milk in the back of the mouth instead of the front, the milk won’t wash all the xylitol off.

She also links to pictures of dental carries, which can be used to scare children who resist dental hygiene efforts.

Newborn Gear Suggestions From Someone Who Knows

Kerflop, mom of three, has a fantastic post on her favorite newborn gear with lots more good suggestions in the comments.  Recommendations include Purple Stork baby announcements, Pollywog nursing pillows, Bert’s Bees buttermilk bath powder, Zolowear slings, and lots more.

Toddlers With High-Class Palates

Via DCist, The Washington Post sits down with some upper-crust children and examines their gourmet dining preferences.  Later, a D.C. mother obsesses about her desire to expose her unborn baby to food from all inhabited continents, and scores an Aussie resturant recommendation.

And Baby Breaks the Budget

The NY Times covers unexpected baby expenses: digital camcorder DVDs, photo printer ink, expanded cable, $300 worth of baby announcements, and having $200 worth of clothes stolen because you forgot about them.