Entertaining

There are many forms of entertainment for your baby, from swings to books to toys. The baby stores are crammed with various versions of these things, but I’ve listed the few essential items that I’ve found have kept my baby occupied and amused through the first year.

Swing or Bouncer

I’d say you should register for either a swing or a bouncer. They both serve the same purpose (to soothe your baby and give you a chance to put him down), and they both have similar features—toys, music, motion—so I wouldn’t get them both. Bouncers are slightly smaller than swings, so they don’t take up as much space.

We had the Fisher-Price My Little Lamb Cradle Swing, and it was frequently used for the first four months. My baby loved being in it, and the rocking would put her right to sleep. Around the end of month two, she started noticing the mobile and the mirror above her head, and would spend a long time staring at them. It was the first sign that she was taking in her environment, and we found that thrilling. The material of the seat looks extremely comfy. Many visitors have commented that they’d like to have an adult-size version of this swing!

Baby Gym

When your baby is a newborn, there isn’t much that will entertain her. She’ll barely notice most things. That’s why we loved our Fisher-Price Rainforest Gym, which has four lights that alternately flash above the baby’s head. Even before our baby was able to play with the toys on the gym, she noticed the flashing lights and would lie there mesmerized by them. And as she grew older, she became more and more interactive with the various hanging toys (first batting at them, then grabbing them, and now detaching them from the gym). We were able to leave her on the mat for fifteen to twenty minutes at a time (starting at five months of age), and she’d entertain herself. We only recently put the mat away (at nine months), although we detached all the toys so that she can continue to play with them.

Jumper

The Fisher-Price Precious Planet Jumperoo is great entertainment for a six month old. Our baby wasn’t able to stand properly in hers until that age, but now she just loves jumping up and down and playing with the attached toys. We keep ours in the kitchen, where I’m able to prepare a whole meal while she keeps herself entertained the whole time (about half an hour).

A popular alternative to the jumper is the Exersaucer, which also comes with lots of attached toys and distractions (but there’s no jumping feature). We don’t own one, but many parents have given that product a positive review.

Baby Armchair

We bought a Bumbo chair after I saw how much my coworker’s baby was enjoying it. We started putting our baby into this soft chair when she was about three months old. It supports her head (although it will still loll to the side after awhile, so you must always be there to supervise). It’s nice to be able to put the baby down in a position that’s not lying flat on her back so she can observe the room. An added bonus: Our baby would often feel compelled to poop while sitting in her Bumbo. We’d put her in it just before leaving the house, and she’d just about always empty her system on command!

Books

I love to read, so I was eager to instill this interest in my baby. We began reading to her when she was about two months old. Now, at nine months, she has preferences for certain books, is able to turn pages and lift flaps, and gets noticeably excited when we sit down together in the “reading chair.” Even if you’re not a big reader, story time is a great way to wind down in the evening and spend twenty minutes with your baby.

While registering for books, I initially made the mistake of getting stories that I remembering loving as a child—not infant-level books. I got a lot of Dr. Seuss, which is way too advanced for a young baby. Luckily, we were also given some more age-appropriate books as gifts, and I quickly discovered that my baby preferred books with just a few words or a sentence on each page. For example, her all-time favorite is a Baby Einstein book called Mirror Me! by Julie Aigner-Clark. I really didn’t see the appeal of this book—the pictures are very simple, the text is borderline nonsensical, and the mirrors in the book went unnoticed by my baby. Yet, she was almost instantly drawn to it and would smile at each character as I turned the pages.

Some other favorites are Where’s Spot? by Eric Hill and Where Is Baby’s Bellybutton? by Karen Katz. You really can’t go wrong with lift-the-flap type books. And some classics that my baby enjoys are The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle and Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise. Get the board book version, not the regular version, trust me. Your baby will want to chew and pull on the pages, and the cardboard is just more durable.

And for the adults, some good books to have as a new parents are Baby 411 and What to Expect the First Year. Baby 411 answers just about every question that’ll pop up in the first few weeks (“Is this color poop ok?”, “How many hours should a three-month-old sleep?”), while What to Expect the First Year covers your baby’s development and milestones from month to month. It’s much better-written than What to Expect When You’re Expecting, a book that I felt was almost juvenile in tone and not as helpful as some other pregnancy books out there (for example, The Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy). Having these two books will help you avoid many off-hour calls to your doctor’s office.

Toys

Toys are not terribly important to a newborn—they are barely capable of controlling their own arm movements, much less manipulating a toy. But sometime between months three and four, your baby will start to grasp objects, and the world of toys will open up to him. Some early toys that I recommend are the classic plastic keys by First Year, which attracted my newborn with the colors and rattling, then became a teether when she was about five months old, and now at nine months, is one of her favorite toys to carefully examine, key by key.

Another good teether is Sophie the giraffe. I didn’t understand why this (rather expensive) toy was so popular until my baby started teething and couldn’t get enough of it. Another wonderful toy is the Little Tikes Baby Piano. The recommended age is six months, but my baby started banging on it at four months.

Baby Videos *

Another mom recommended a video called "Baby Signing Time” to me after we took a trial baby sign language class together. The whole point of baby sign language is that you can teach your baby to communicate with you using American Sign Language before he is able to speak. This way, he can tell you when he wants “milk” or “book,” for example, and this limits his frustration and sidesteps a lot of tears.

I was a bit skeptical of the whole thing, but I thought I’d check out the video anyway. Starting at six months (the recommended age), I began showing about ten minutes of the video at a time to my baby (the whole video is half an hour). At first, she didn’t seem interested, but after the third or fourth showing, she started really looking at the images and laughing out loud. In addition to teaching babies signs, the video is entertaining, with music, simple cartoons, and footage of other babies.

Then, at seven months old, my baby made her first sign—milk! It was very deliberate, and she did it several times while she was drinking a bottle. My husband and I were amazed. She hasn’t signed any other words since then (although she’ll keep repeating “milk”), but she continues to love watching the video. I’ll let her watch it once every other day. She is completely mesmerized by it, and it frees me up to do chores. I can’t recommend this video enough. We love “Baby Signing Time” and have also gotten the second, third, and fourth volumes.