Buying for baby

By Published On: December 1st, 2014

Aren’t the holidays fun with little guys? So much anticipation […]

IMG_1368Aren’t the holidays fun with little guys? So much anticipation and excitement—tattletale elves and Santa and all those decorations. Our baby girl is big-eyed at all the lights, and now that Thanksgiving is behind us and our Christmas shopping is about to get real, I’m wondering what, exactly, the average 4-month-old might put on her Christmas list.
Our older kiddos are vocal about every last little thing they want—they make it easy. But all the stuff the baby needs, well, she has them already. And really, beyond the essentials, the things she needs are really things we need for her, and most of them are just new places to put her. So there’s the little Papasan seat that she’s had since the day she came home from the hospital, the baby carrier she cruises around in daily, the recently acquired Bumbo and her newest spot to hang (literally): the jumper. That one is an early Christmas present from her nana, and it’s working like a charm. We slide two big cookbooks beneath her so her toes can reach, and she always manages to wedge one arm down in the seat bit, but she’s figured out how to spin the wheels and suck on things and generally we can expect a good 15 minutes before she’s squawking to get out.
So how are we going to fill this little girl’s stocking? Teethers and rattlers are fine, I guess, but we have those already—and she’s more likely to drop them or smack herself in the face with them than actually play. What else is there in the 4 to 6-month gift range? With three older siblings and a geriatric pug cruising around here, she’s not going on the floor in one of those playards. She’s not in her crib enough for a mobile. We already have no less than a bazillion books. We have Sophie the Giraffe. She doesn’t care about clothes, but I have a feeling there’s going to be a whole new wardrobe under that Christmas for her to grow out of in two months. And we all know it—come Christmas morning, all she’s going to care about is the piece of wadded-up wrapping she manages to snag. And it’ll be pretty adorable.