Top 10 (or 11) Books for Babies 15 Months and Under

I meant for this to be a top 10 list but apparently I can't count.

My babies love books. I'm not saying it like I'm bragging like they're so advanced. It's more like they love holding books, opening books, turning them over, and chomping on them. They pretty much freak out when they realize they're going to be read to. All I have to do to make them go insane is make the sign for book. They start making panting, happy sounds and try to crawl after me as I go to the next room where I store the books.

I used to read to the babies by putting one in my lap and one in a Bumbo seat, but they've outgrown the Bumbos. Even before they outgrew them James would hurl himself out to get to the stack of books behind me so he could help himself. These days I put the pile of books I'm going to read to them on top of the changing table so they can't get to them, and they just gather round me. James loves to stand in front of me and practice his professional wrestling maneuver of falling on me repeatedly, while I read. Their favorite part is when reading time is over and I give them a few to hold. I have to be selective because James has succeeded in ripping a couple board book pages. James is the bodybuilder-ripping-a-phone-book of the baby set.

We keep a few books on the sofa for convenient access but we have to hide them behind the cushions because the twins will freak out if they see them. (We're not fooling anybody though because as soon as they are on the sofa they're reaching to see what's behind the cushions.) At their 12 month check up the pediatrician asked if we read to the babies and I accidentally let it slip that we hide books from our children. And he was like, "Why are you hiding books?..."


Who Loves You Baby? (by Nina Laden)
Well first of all, good luck finding this 2007 book. It's going for $55 used on Amazon (yeah right), though I'm sure it must be available somewhere else. There's a mirror on the last page of the book and each page has the eyes cut out of a different animal (so far it sounds like the Room Full of Crazy in a serial killer's lair). There's also a caption on the facing page ("You are my Lovey Dovey." "You are my Busy Bee." etc.) If positioned correctly, your baby can see their own eyes/face inside the animal's. You know you have the mirror positioned correctly when you see your baby get a big grin. I've also seen the twins turn over the book to see if something was behind the mirror (but then again, they seem to do that to every book). And best of all, the babies have put their mouths right up to the mirror and kissed the other baby. (Well, at this age it's more of a mouth on the mirror than a real kiss, but still, sweet.)

Julia is my Lovey Dovey. (10 months)


James is my Busy Bee. (10 months)

Tails and Heads (two books, both by Matthew Van Fleet)
Wow. Tails is yet another book that's out of stock on Amazon, but at least it's available used at a normal price. This is marked as appropriate for ages 2-5, but the babies love it now AND hopefully they'll continue to love it for a few more years. This book has it all - textures, parts that move when you pull the tabs, half pages they can race to flip open, and cute illustrations and rhymes. James loves it so much he ate the swishing tail that moves and Mark had to pull it out of his mouth. He still grabs for that stump of a tail when I read it. He is a boy obsessed.

Heads is in print, has texture and eye-popping, clever parts of the book that move, and is actually even better than Tails. If you end up really liking these books, the same author put out Dog, a fun book with more texture and motion. (There is also Cat if you're so inclined.)

Hooray for Fish (by Lucy Cousins)
Are you kidding me? Are all the books I'm recommending out of stock? Again, it's available from other Amazon sellers. My friend Leslie got this for the twins from the Monterey Bay Aquarium because inside the book there's a "twin fin-fin fish." The story with Mom at the end is darling, and the illustrations are detailed and hold my babies' attentions which is hard to do when there are no flip-up parts.

Tubby (by Leslie Patricelli)
This is part of a series of books in the same style. (I'm sure Potty will be a winner when the time comes.) The drawings and writing are funny and charming for adults and babies. I try to read this before and after my babies take their daily weekly bimonthly bath.

Where Is Baby's Belly Button? and Where Is Baby's Mommy? (by Karen Katz)
Karen Katz has a whole series of really cute flip-up books. I have a bunch including Where Is Baby's Birthday Cake?, Daddy and Me, Grandma and Me, and Grandpa and Me. Where Is Baby's Belly Button? is the simplest (in fact it was the first favorite book of the twins) and helps teach parts of the body. Where Is Baby's Mommy? chronicles a search for Mommy who's playing hide and seek. Baby looks for Mommy in some uh.. interesting places. For "Is Mommy behind the shower curtain?" I like to add "about to have the shock of her life."

James enjoying Where Is Baby's Mommy? without hurling himself backwards out of his Bumbo seat. (10 1/2 months)

Baby Talk (by Dawn Sirett)
This is a short and simple book showing an emotion for each baby (hungry, sad, sleepy, etc.) My twins like lifting up the flaps and enjoy looking at the babies. They always seem to smile when they see the "happy" baby.

That's Not My Monster (by Fiona Watt)
It's currently unavailable on Amazon but listed by one seller for $999! (There are many others in this "touchy-feely" board book series that might be as good.) That's Not My Monster is simply the best textural book I've seen. The babies always want to touch the textures in this book, as opposed to some books with such lame textures I have to lead the twins' hands to them. The one exception is the fluffy texture - James never wants to touch soft texture in books! (Typical boy or James?) Besides fluffy, the textures include bumpy, bobbly, and rough. Rough is like sandpaper, and the babies fight to touch it.

Guess Who Farm Friends (by Jodie Shepherd)
Yet another book not currently being sold new by Amazon. (Did all my books go out of print immediately after we received them?) If you get past the surreal aspect of animals covering up their faces with their hooves to play peek-a-boo, this is a nice and different sort of lift-the-flap book. There are rhymes, you can do different animal voices while reading, and you can teach them what sound each animal makes. (James thinks it is HILARIOUS to hear me say "Peekaboo. I'm a horse" in horse voice.) Beware the pop-up tableau of animals on the last page - my babies love to attack it. There was a mauling incident we won't speak of involving the horse. Let's just say now he can't hold his own head up. His head may end up in a pop-up Godfather board book soon.

Fisher Price Little People: Christmastime Is Here!
There are many Little People books - this just happens to be the one I have. There's really no story to it. The babies go nuts for this one because each page has a lot of flaps for them to lift. You will find yourself saying what happens under each flap repeatedly. ("The frog has a long stocking." "It's a book of the book." "The bunny tripped on the ice." "Puppy dog is giving her a kiss." "The elf is taking a bath.") These sentences may seem nonsensical now but if you've read this book you KNOW what I'm talking about... My babies were obsessed with the ornament numbered 23 on the last page (not sure why) and it finally tore off from overuse. One nice thing about this book is that when you are tired or want to watch TV you can plop your baby in your lap with this book and let her entertain herself.

My brother and dad reading Christmastime Is Here! to the twins (and by "reading" I mean letting the babies lift up the flaps). (12 1/2 months)


Honorable mentions:

-Corduroy (by Don Freeman). This is the version with a large board book shaped like a bear. Not much to the story but James loves it.
-Anything in the Peekaboo! series. We have Hoppity Hop Peekaboo! and Playtime Peekaboo! (these have texture and the babies' beloved flaps), Noisy Peekaboo!: Vroom! Vroom!, and Noisy Peekaboo: Choo! Choo! (flaps that create sound if you choose the right answer).


Julia holds Noisy Peekaboo: Choo! Choo! (10 1/2 months)


Pssst! Julia! You can find Squeaky Mouse under the cheese slices!

Kathy's Unsolicited Advice for Parents-to-Be, Part II

6. Take monthly photos of the babies next to a stuffed animal.

It's fun to see the babies grow and change, especially the first year, and especially the first couple months. I wish I'd started earlier than 11 days since they were so tiny.

James at 11 days and James at 1 year.

Julia at 12 days and Julia at 1 year.

7. Get a white noise machine but not for who you think.

The white noise machine isn't for the baby - in fact, there are some studies that cite their connection to delayed language development - but for you. When it's not your shift and you want to sleep, you want to cover up the sounds of the baby crying.


8. Don't wash new clothing too early.

Don't wash or take tags off of new clothing the first year until your baby is big enough to wear them. (At size 12 months and above it takes longer to outgrow sizes.) Your baby might never wear those clothes if they're unseasonable. Also, babies (50th percentile and larger) always seem to be wearing the next size up from their chronological age (so if they're 6 months they're wearing 9 months, etc.). Gerbers runs particularly small. Right now the twins are nearly 15 months and Julia, who is perfectly average in size for her age, has best fit in 18 month sizes for a few months now, while James who is 60-75th percentile in weight and height best fits into 18-24 month sizes. So be careful buying clothes the first year and predicting what season they'll be worn in.


9. Get a Mother's Helper.

I don't want to be a broken record (see #10 on this page) but do it!


10. You may cut a finger while cutting fingernails.

My friend April warned me that cutting fingernails is tricky and to expect to see blood a few times. I mentioned this to some other friends and they said she was crazy. And then I mentioned that to some OTHER other friends and they said my other friends were crazy. Anyway, in my experience, until you get the hang of it, you may lop off a tiny piece of the baby's skin while trimming fingernails. The first time this happened Mark said, "No maiming, Julia!" I offered him the chance to cut her fingernails instead and of course he declined so I kept my position as finger cutter, er... fingernail cutter.

I only cut their skin twice and then I got the hang of it, and it's never happened again. If you're right handed always make sure when you get to the left edge of the nail that the left edge of the nail cutter is in the air and not touching skin.

Julia's first manicure. (2 weeks)

I was afraid to cut their nails for awhile so I used a nail file (which is pretty ineffective) for as long as I could.

Kathy's Unsolicited Advice for Parents-to-Be, Part I

First of all here's my quote about being a parent. Feel free to frame it or cross stitch it on a pillow.

"As a parent you live for the baby smiles and laughs that give your life meaning. The rest of the time you can't wait for them to fall asleep so you can get back to the Internet." - Kathleen Mikulis, 2011

Yep, it's another advice post. I can't help thinking about advice lately since I have two friends who are expecting, two who gave birth yesterday or today, and another who's trying (fingers crossed), and I have lots of unsolicited advice to give. (Psst! These four older posts might also be of interest.)


1. Get a good camera and take good pictures.

Definitely have a good camera that you can use indoors with low light and take lots of newborn photos because they don't look newborn-y for long.

Our camera (no lens) - a bit pricey but worth it (good in low light and can take rapid fire pictures):
http://www.amazon.com/Nikon-D90-12-3MP-Digital-Body/dp/B001ET5U92/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1298514729&sr=1-2

Our lens:
http://www.amazon.com/Nikon-35mm-AF-S-Digital-Cameras/dp/B001S2PPT0/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1298514783&sr=1-1

And some advice I read helped me to take photos that turned out so much better compared to what I was taking before! The advice is this: don't use a flash which startles the baby and provides light that's too harsh. Use natural, diffused light from a window. And incorporate your baby's favorite blankets in the photo, too, to serve as visual props and modeling tools to help position your baby. I didn't try this next trick but it also mentions placing the baby in a car seat but using a blanket under the baby so the car seat doesn't appear in the shot.

Using natural light made ALL the difference for me. In fact after reading the advice one of my favorite activities was to photograph them, and they enjoyed Mommy smiling at them trying to get them to smile. Here are some photos from my old (non-DSLR) camera - I wish we'd had the Nikon from the beginning.

James and his Japanese animation-size eyes. (1 1/2 months)

I think this photo of James was my first attempt at a window-side photoshoot. Not an amazing shot but much better than the ones I'd gotten before.

These two pictures were taken my second time putting them in front of the window. (2 months)

Mark suggests mentioning his advice - which he likes to point out that I ignored - not to take pictures too close and get disproportionate fisheye shots. Ah yes. Mark hates my photos. Granted, he has a point that full body shots when taken too close are disproportionate. If it was up to Mark, whenever I took pictures of the babies laying down I would have stood directly over them with my camera as high above them as possible to get a proportionate shot. Two problems with this: 1) Whenever I'd crop these shots to only the head, the resolution wasn't nearly as good as I'd like, and most importantly, 2) I had MUCH, MUCH better results getting the babies to smile when I took pictures close to them. (Note: the photography advice I found here recommends getting on the babies' level, up close to them.)

Here are some pictures I took that I like and Mark hates because they're too close or disproportional, or both. (Or maybe Mark's just underestimating the size of James's giant head.) (6 months and 3 1/2 months)

2. Have a snack food (for yourself!) on a table near where you hold babies.

The first three months you will be stuck holding a baby for an hour or two in a row. You will get hungry. Always have a snack food within reaching distance.

3. Put your babies to bed before they show signs of being tired.

The first 6-8 months we didn't know any better and we'd wait to see our babies rub their eyes before putting them down. A few times they stayed up as late as 8:30 p.m. despite their chosen morning wake up time only 8 1/2 hours later at 5:00 a.m.! Get into a good bedtime routine: feeding, diapering and changing, light play, gradual light dimming, and singing (or a CD of lullabies) at the end.


4. Put your baby to bed with multiple pacifiers.

There's nothing worse than going into your darkened baby's room (Mark: Do we have a darkened baby?) in the middle of the night with them crying and you not able to find their pacifier. (This is especially true if you have a certain boy who is always letting them fall out of his crib.) So put several in their crib. Added bonus: as they get older, having multiple pacifiers in the crib means it's easier for your baby to find a pacifier himself and not wake you up.


Under James's crib is the Bermuda Triangle of pacifiers.

5. Know the difference between middle-of-the-night fussing and crying.

I'm guessing this is obvious for most people but I definitely didn't know there was a difference between middle-of-the-night fussing and crying. I would jump up from my bed and run in when I heard fussing or crying, pop a pacifier in the baby's mouth, and hopefully head back to sleep. However, doing this when the baby is only fussing is likely to disturb the baby's sleep and possibly wake him. Plus it keeps them from learning how to self soothe and put themselves back to sleep. Before I knew the difference, I was waking up 4-5 times a night to attend to the babies, particularly James. Then my friend Kashi clued me in, and after only going in when I heard crying, James became a champion at putting himself back to sleep. Julia could still use some work.

Valentine's Day 2011 or How I Became the Crazy Mom Who Rented Cupid Wings

A few weeks before Valentine's Day I had what I thought was a genius idea: dress James as Cupid. Yes, James would hate me as a teenager - especially when a girl could come by and (horrors!) see evidence of Mom's craziness hanging in the house - but for now since he can't protest, I could have my fun. I found a store that carried a Cupid's bow and arrow, and while I was there I also saw angel wings, which I wasn't initially planning to get. Then I found out they also rented prettier feather wings for the same price. And thus I became the crazy mom who actually rented Cupid wings for her son just to take some pictures.

Back in August, Mark and I were eating at one of our favorite restaurants with the babies, when a man approached us and said he'd be interested in taking pictures of the twins. I know this sounds like a good pedophile pick-up line, but he showed us poster size blown up prints of photos he'd taken of his granddaughters, and the owner had also used him to take photos for the menu. He was an amateur photographer with really good equipment and was interested in shooting babies for the first time. I finally got around to e-mailing him at the end of January and found he'd be happy to come by the next day to take pictures. (Note: too much enthusiasm is also a bad sign of a potential pedophile. My mom asked how she would recognize him if he came to the door, and I told her if he looked like a pedophile to let him in.) He set up five big lights in the nursery and took photos of the twins in regular clothes and also their Valentine's Day outfits. We also took our own photos of the babies in their Valentine's Day garb. (Photos 1, 4, and 5 were taken by the photographer.)


James is clearly thrilled to be Cupid.














Julia gets in position for her 100 meter sprint.


We are cleared for take-off.

Advice for Parents-to-Be of Multiples

I've been thinking a lot lately about what advice specific to twins I would give to parents-to-be of multiples since my friend, Helene, is pregnant with twins. Here goes. (These posts might also be of interest.)


1) Be ready early.

Whenever anyone tells me they're expecting twins the first thing I say is "Not to scare you but..." And what follows is this: "be ready early." Twins tend to come about a month early, and among twin moms I know, easily over half had pre-term labor scares that led to about two months of bed rest. Just like me! Once you're on bed rest, it's hard to get the nursery ready or do all the other nesting projects you had planned (and once you give birth it's impossible), so in the sage words of Larry the Cable Guy, "git-R-done."

"Work on that nursery! I mean, git-R-done!"

And bed rest actually isn't actually that bad. I had a laptop so I didn't have a problem with boredom. What bothered me the most was the isolation.


2) Join a twins group.

I joined Gemini Crickets, the twins organization for Silicon Valley. (There is also Mid-Peninsula Parents of Multiples.) Their dues are $40 a year but I made up for the membership fee even before I gave birth by getting free or greatly reduced gear from other members. Plus, they have several garage sales a year for twin parents. (At one of their garage sales I scored a $5 music table and cute outfits for $1 each). The best thing though about being in a twins group is their online forum. I've gone there to ask all sorts of baby-related questions. And it's a good place to get playdates with other twin moms.


3) Notebooks are your friend.

Keep a notebook to write down feedings, diaperings, etc. Trust me, with two babies you will lose track. This is really only necessary until they eat on a schedule, but until then it's hard enough to remember on your own, let alone not know what happened during the shift before yours when you were asleep. It also helps in answering doctor questions the first few months about how much the babies are drinking and how many wet and poopy diapers they're producing.


4) Masking tape is also your friend.

Put masking tape on bottles so you can write on it to keep track of whose is whose and how much is inside.


What the inside of our refrigerator used to look like. Bottles go in the middle, formula on the left, milk goes on the right. Chinese takeout and pickles apparently went on the far left.


5) Do the best you can with nursing but don't kill yourself.

I was lucky my mom lived with us for several months and my mother-in-law came to visit often because I wouldn't otherwise have been able to give my babies breastmilk. For something that's so natural, nursing is surprisingly hard! Babies that are premature aren't as good as sucking and that was the case with my brood. Working with a lactation consultant (a lot!) who weighed my babies at 10 minute intervals during an hour of nursing, she determined that each one needed to be nursed for 20-30 minutes (after that they were pretty much just hanging out on my boobs), followed by a bottle. After that I would pump. Let me tell you, in the early days babies often need to be fed every 2 hours. That meant by the time I finished the first cycle of feeding each baby and pumping it was pretty much time to start all over again. Thankfully I had a lot of help. I bought a twin nursing pillow but was rarely able to get them latched and keep them latched. It was definitely a two person effort, but with babies that latch well it's definitely doable.

In case you're wondering, Julia (my better sucker) rejected the breast at 2 1/2 months and James at 4. After that I pumped in all my spare moments. I can remember not eating lunch until 3:30 on more than one occasion because when I did have a spare moment earlier in the day, I pumped. And I pumped and I pumped and I pumped - even during my Jeopardy taping (well, not during MY episode) - for nine months. I had an undiagnosed infection that made pumping very painful so I had to keep lessening the suction accordingly, and then eventually I was only making 1/6 of one baby's total milk for the day, and decided it was no longer worth it.


Sometimes I felt like I birthed a litter.

6) Buy your maternity pants at Motherhood with the comfy full belly panel.

I bought some maternity jeans at Old Navy early on and had to abandon them after a few months because they did not get big enough for a big ol' twin belly.

It's not good when you have to use office supplies to keep your pants together, though to be fair the pair on the left weren't maternity pants. On the right are my Old Navy pants - which were good at the time - but I outgrew them two months after I bought them.

It may look like I'm wearing granny panties but i'm oh so comfortable.

7) Your babies will be dirty but it's not a bad thing.


Julia may look cute but she stinks to high heaven.


You can crawl but you can't hide from the stench, James!

Don't feel bad if you only bathe your babies once a week. Early on, even with another person to help you, it's hard to fit in baths and have the energy to bathe your babies between the constant feedings and the crying and the holding. When you're on your own it's very difficult to bathe two. In theory you could use two bath seats, but that only works if you have a shower curtain instead of shower doors (no dice in our house). And if you bathe them one at a time you can't keep an eye on the other baby. So I've decided to just wait until the weekends when Mark can help. They're babies - despite my captions on the pictures above, they don't smell. It's not like they do triathlons between poopings. You really just have to worry about keeping their creases clean (and you can clean the neck fat rolls with a washcloth outside the bath if you need to.) An informal poll among twin moms I know shows that a majority opts to bathe their munchkins once a week. It'll be nice when my twins are a little older and they can both sit in the tub safely, because I feel bad now keeping them from something they enjoy.


8) Schedule!

After the on-demand feedings of the first several months are over, definitely put your twins on a schedule. This is why: if they don't nap at the same time you never get a break. (This is one reason singleton parents are really lucky - if their little one doesn't want to nap at a certain time, they can just try again later. With twin parents, if you put both babies down and only one sleeps, it's the "Oh crap!" heard round the world.)


9) Feed them at the same time.

The other reason to put your twins on a schedule: you want them to have their feedings at the same time. For a long while, I resisted feeding them at the same time, thinking that when I'd take the bottles away to burp my little ones (a process that could take several minutes with my babies since they were prone to spitting up) there would be a lot of crying. But actually, once they had 1/3 to 1/2 a bottle, they were fairly content to wait for their turn to burp.

How to bottle feed them at the same time? Two Boppies. I know you'll be tempted to get the giant twin nursing pillow, and by all means, get that. But Boppies are wonderful for so many purposes, one of which is to prop up two babies and then hold a bottle in each one's mouth. The first half of the feeding, I'd turn on the TV and it was beautifully silent in the apartment (except for the TV of course) for about six minutes. (For Mark's advice for making large batches of formula, see the comment at the end of this post.)

This is how it's done! (Thanks, Stacy, for the photo!)

I returned home and had to piece together what happened with Mark and the babies. (Something like: they fell asleep on the sofa in the Boppies but Mark needed to leave the room and didn't want them to fall off the sofa.)


At a park playdate you can also feed your twins at the same time by putting them in their car seats. For this visit I employed some cheap child labor.

What to do if their feeding times are significantly off? Go on a walk! Miraculously, babies forget they're hungry while they're on a walk, so the baby who woke up early won't fuss that they're eating later. (What to do if their feeding times are off by an hour and a half and they have feedings every three hours? Give up. Your day is officially ruined.)


10) Keep your sanity by getting a Mother's Helper.

Get a mother's helper during the first six months, maybe even nine months. There were times the first six months - especially the first three - when my mom and I would be in tears at the end of the day, and there were two of us! A mother's helper takes care of babies as well as household tasks. It meant my mom and I could take a break, one of us could go run errands, we could eat a leisurely lunch at home, etc. I found our mother's helpers through the Alpha Phi sorority at Santa Clara University, and I cracked the whip over them for three hours stretches a couple times a week at a rate of $10-12 / hour. A bargain for my sanity.

11) Get an Exersaucer and a Jumperoo. I would put the babies in these for only 15 minutes at a time (since there were studies that these contraptions might impede their physical development), and it would give me peace to scarf down my lunch.


Both babies occupied means Mommy gets to eat.


Gear (obviously borrow and buy stuff used as much as you can):

I used the book Twin Sense to help figure out how many items I might need of certain vital items. (It also has useful advice on how to set up two babies to nurse at the same time while on your own.)


Julia's finished pop-up books and has moved on to reading about how to raise herself.

I'm not going to go through the entire baby gear list (obviously you know you need diapers and such), but for some you're not sure of, here's my input:

-Boppy pillows (2)
-Washcloths (20). Besides being useful for baths, when the little ones started eating solid foods (3 times a day) and snacks (2 times a day), I found I needed to wash their faces afterwards nearly every time.
-Crib sheets (4) and waterproof pads (4).
-Lightweight Blankets (12). They're good for propping up the middle of Boppy pillows for feedings, rolling up to form around baby heads in car seats, and rolling up and putting next to sleeping babies when they're first born (I later discovered SwaddleMe and preferred them for swaddling.).
-A really big lightweight blanket to cover the whole stroller (1). This is good for meals out or during walks to help them sleep the first several months. It's also good as a photo backdrop on a bed.
-Thermometer (1)


Blankets for going around the car head rest.

Big ticket items:

-Pack N Play (1) They can both sleep in here at first. Later you can move one/both to cribs. We didn't use the bassinets long but it was only because we preferred the Pack N Play. (Note: I bought one with a diaper change station and a Newborn Napper but since both twins slept here and I couldn't access those items, those options were wasted.) My little ones both slept in the Pack N Play for several months until James started rotating in the middle of the night to rest his head against Julia's feet. I was worried she might kick him so at that point I separated them.
-Crib (2) You don't need this right away and of course you'll eventually want two. Some babies sleep in the same crib for a long time. Then there are mine who keep each other awake and now have to sleep in separate rooms.
-Double Snap N Go stroller frame (1) and SnugRide car seats (2) since they'll snap into the frame
-Bob Duallie Jogging Stroller (1) for when they're older (if you're inclined to jog)


My newborns sharing the Pack N Play. And keeping the blanket industry alive.

You want to make as many "stations" as you can, where they will entertain themselves (usually for about 10 minutes if you're lucky). You only need one of each of these stations because the other twin can be using another station. The only exception is an activity mat. Two activity mats are preferable since they spend the most time here of any station the first several months. Your stations could include: activity mat, bouncy chair, swing, the floor with toys, car seat with arch of toys; and later, Exersaucer, Jumperoo, and Bumbo seat with tray.


James playing on his quilt.


The babies in their Bumbo seats. (I wish I'd gotten the Bumbos with trays so they could play with toys instead of dropping them and instead grabbing their sister's foot for amusement. Then again I got them free through Gemini Crickets so I can't really complain.)