My precious baby just keeps growing up. Nothing brings me as much joy as watching him learn new things and then absolutely beam, delighted with himself, as he does them over and over and over. This month he has learned he can throw things, and the whole house is enjoying the benefits. Suddenly the dog’s diet is much more varied, I find sweet treasures in corners he can’t even get to, and nothing stays on the coffee table long enough for it to feel cluttered. Soon we’ll have a one-year-old, and nothing makes me feel the rapidity with which I’m cruising down the conveyor belt of my own life quite like watching him grow up so quickly. I wrote about his favorite toys at ten months old, and decided I should update that list now that his tastes have matured another month.
This fish is a cat toy. My dad gave it to him for Christmas as a joke, because he had seen some video where somebody had affixed the fish to their baby’s bottom so it could pat the baby to sleep. The idea of a baby being patted to sleep is wild to me. My own baby needs 20 minutes to confront the contents of his own mind in absolute darkness to even think about going to sleep and it’s that, along with the fact that he screams if he isn’t fed every two hours, that assures me he’s actually mine. My son loves this fish. He sits on the floor gnawing on it like Gollum until the battery runs out, which is about five minutes. We keep a portable charger in the diaper bag just for this fish. I send photos to my dad all the time of the baby playing with this fish, and each time he asks me if I’m just humoring him. I’m not. This is my son’s favorite toy. We use it without the catnip.
Like many babies, my son adores bath time. He gets to sit naked and shriek with laughter while chewing on a penguin, and as we get older we get fewer and fewer of those opportunities. He would sit there splashing all night if he could. But he can’t, because of all the toys we put in the tub with him, this tub stopper is his favorite. He allows himself to be tempted briefly by a few of the other toys, but he won’t rest until he’s got this toy into his hands. And then like some Shakespearean tragedy, as soon as he gets what he so desperately wants, bath time is over.
My son loves to play with whatever’s on the coffee table, so we like to arrange a variety of toys there for him to interact with. But if this cup is on the coffee table, it’s the only thing he wants. He returns over and over to the cup, clumsily grabbing at the handles and eventually finding the straw with his slobbery little mouth. Sometimes he gets mixed up and tries to suck on the bottom of the cup for a while, but eventually he figures it out. It’s kind of hard to get much water out of these cups, but if allowed the opportunity, my son will drink every last drop. Babies aren’t supposed to drink that much water at once, but try telling that to this guy. So if you’ve got something you really need to get done and need to keep your little one occupied, and you’ve got time to go to the hospital later, these cups are great for keeping little mouths busy (and quiet!). Comes as a two-pack for play in multiple rooms.
These Pacifier Clips are really handy for keeping your little one’s pacifier or teething toys from falling out of their mouths and onto the disgusting ground. And obviously it’s important to keep babies from putting something from the ground into their mouths. Obviously it’s possible to even do such a thing. Obviously your baby isn’t going to do something absurd like, for example, crawl rapidly across the room to clamp his mouth onto the tire of his own stroller when given the opportunity. Anyway, while we do use these clips to attach toys to his stroller or carrier when we’re out and about, they get much more use on their own. He likes to crawl around with one of these clips in his mouth, checking on all the parts of the house he’s responsible for overseeing. Eventually he’ll get distracted by something and he’ll drop it, and then it’ll lie there on the floor, dripping wet, forgotten.
If these aren’t toys then explain to me why my son is playing absolute games with them. I can say with complete certainty that no human has ever pooped as much as my son. I’m talking six to eight times a day. I change him first thing in the morning because he wakes up in a literal suitcase of his own pee, and within five minutes he needs another new diaper because he has pooped. That’s fine. That’s normal. He’s up and moving around, he’s had his milk, it’s going to happen. But then he poops again 30 minutes later. And another 30 minutes later. And these are not small amounts of poop. These diapers are full. I can’t comprehend where it’s coming from. It makes me think my baby is just sitting there at all times, nothing but poop from foot to shoulder. When I hold my baby, I am holding poop. When I kiss my baby, I am kissing poop. As bedtime approaches, the trash can full and my bank account empty, I sit in fear because I don’t know when it’s safe to put him to bed, when I can feel assured we won’t have to change another diaper. Definite favorite toy. Highly recommend.
Denise Resting 
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