What to Expect the First Year (111 page)

• Keep it age-appropriate. No matter how compelling some older kids' games and apps look (or how precocious your precious one is), they may be overwhelming and overstimulating for a baby who's still getting the hang of reality (never mind the virtual kind). So avoid aging up—take the rating on the app store listing or software box seriously and stick to games, activities, and apps intended for very young children.

• Don't force it. If you decide to opt out of the tot-technology craze and reserve your lap time for sessions with
Goodnight Moon
and rounds of The Itsy-Bitsy Spider, don't worry that you're shortchanging your baby on the preparation he'll need to succeed in a wired world. There's plenty of time to hook your little cookie up.

First words … first steps … first friends … maybe even, first tantrum. The developmentally packed first year finishes up with your baby closing in on (or passing) some pretty amazing milestones—ones you probably couldn't even imagine at the start. Now, as your little one cruises (or even toddles) into the second year, more exciting achievements are right around the corner. Your baby is growing by leaps and bounds—as is the world he or she is busy conquering. Help your just-about-toddler learn all about it—tackling new challenges, honing new skills, and mastering new firsts—by offering the following:

A safe environment for taking risks.
Always afraid your almost-toddler will walk (or climb, or cruise) into trouble? That's a good reason to be extra-vigilant, but not to be overly protective. To really tackle toddlerhood, your little one needs to have opportunities to take risks—carefully supervised risks, but risks nonetheless. To stop and smell a flower, to peek behind a tree, to see where a path leads or what's under a rock. To clamber up a play structure, to scale a pile of couch cushions, to climb up stairs and down again. Of course you'll want to set limits (climbing off the bed is fine, but jumping on the bed is not), of course you'll need to be ever alert (and always overestimating your little one's ability to find trouble), of course you'll have to pull out all the childproofing stops (including installing gates at both the top and bottom of stairways). But keeping your tiny explorer fenced in (whether in a play yard, a stroller, or a backpack) will stand in the way of him or her making important discoveries—about the world, and about him- or herself.

A world of difference.
The baby who sees nothing but home or daycare, the car, and the supermarket gets a very limited worldview—and that's too bad. There's a world of difference outside the door, and even if it's all pretty standard stuff to you by now, it's all new to baby. So get out—even when the weather's not great, the opportunities for learning are. Take your baby places—area playgrounds, parks, art museums, a children's, science, or natural history museum, toy stores (before the gimmes take hold, you can call them “toy museums”), the fire station, restaurants, the farmers market, pet shops, shopping malls, or other busy business areas with lots of store windows to peer into and lots of people to see.

Plenty to play with.
The world is sometimes toy enough to enjoy, but to give your baby the widest variety of experiences and the greatest opportunities to flex muscles of all kinds (including those creative, imaginative, intellectual, and social ones), provide:

• Pull-and-push toys. Toys that need to be pushed or pulled provide practice for those who've just begun to walk, and confidence (and physical support) for those just tottering on the brink—plus, if they can be used to “shop” for toy groceries or to transport a “baby,” they nurture imagination, too. Riding toys babies can sit on and propel with their feet may also be a fun step toward independent mobility—and toward trike rides to come.

• Art supplies. There's a mini Monet inside every near-toddler—all you have to do is release the creative genius within. Offer crayons, washable markers, and chunky chalk to scribble with, along with a variety of approved surfaces—paper taped to the floor or coffee table (so it doesn't slide around), a large pad, a tiny easel (once your baby can stand comfortably), a wipe-off board, a chalkboard, or the sidewalk for chalk masterpieces. Afraid of your baby making his or her mark on the walls? Supervise art projects carefully, and confiscate crayons and markers when they're used where they shouldn't be, or when they end up in baby's mouth (or nose, or ear). Pens and pencils are risky business, since they're pointy, so supervise their use super-carefully or don't allow them in baby's hands at all. Finger painting can be fun for some tykes, while others are uncomfortable with the messy fingers that come with this art form (clearly, don't push it if that's the case with your tot).

• Music makers. Let your baby bang on a toy keyboard (or on a real one, if you're lucky enough to have access to one), xylophone, or drum, or shake a tambourine or rhythm stick. Also encourage (headaches notwithstanding) musical improvisation—banging two pot lids together, or a spoon in a pot. And of course, make music the easy way—by turning on songs that your little one can move to.

• Putting-and-taking toys. Babies love to put things in and take them out, although the latter skill develops before the former. You can buy
putting-in-and-taking-out toys, or just use safe objects around the house such as empty boxes, baskets, wooden spoons, measuring cups, paper cups and plates, napkins, and scraps of fabric. Practice putting in and taking out at cleanup time, too (baby will be way better at taking out than putting in, but that's where the practice comes in). Sand, or if you're in the house, raw rice or water, allow for putting in and taking out in the form of pouring (you can limit its indoor use to the tub and baby's high chair), and most toddlers love those materials (just add constant supervision).

• Shape sorters. Usually long before toddlers can say circle, square, or triangle, they learn to recognize these shapes and fit them in the proper openings in a shape-sorter toy for endless fun. That is, once they get the hang of it (what looks simple to you requires a high level of manual dexterity and spatial awareness for your little one). Be prepared to sit by and offer help as needed if frustration starts to set in.

• Dexterity toys. Toys that require turning, twisting, pushing, pressing, and pulling encourage children to use their hands in a variety of ways. It'll take a while before your little one's dexterity is well honed, but provide opportunities to fine-tune small motor skills with peg boards, play dough (if baby can be trusted to play without eating), large bead mazes (beads that move on preformed twisted metal loops or a wooden abacus), puppets, and activity cubes.

• Bath toys for water play. Ah … the joy of water play. Besides the fun that comes with splish-splashing away, baby can use cups to fill and pour to his or her heart's content. Different-size cups can teach the concepts of big and small, while cups with holes in the bottom can help teach about empty and full (baby fills the cup with water, the water streams out, the cup is empty). Bath toys in the shape of animals (that rubber ducky, for instance, or a rubber elephant that sprays water out of its trunk) teach about different animals (a floating zoo!). Foam letters that stick to the wall when wet are a good introduction to the ABCs. The tub is also a good place for blowing bubbles, but you'll probably have to do the blowing yourself—let your baby do the tracking and popping for now.

• Books. You can't have a live horse, elephant, and lion in your living room—but they can all visit your home in a book. Look at and read picture books with your baby several times during the day, and always leave a stack within his or her reach. An age-appropriate fleeting attention span may mean storytime will be brief (maybe just a few minutes), but it will build the foundation that future readers need.

• Pretend playthings. Toy dishes, a playhouse or kitchen, pretend food, a toy phone or doctor's kit or broom, trucks and cars, dolls and a stroller, stuffed animals, hats, grown-up shoes, paper shopping bags, empty handbags, sofa cushions—almost anything can be magically transformed in an imaginative toddler's world of make-believe. This kind of play not only nurtures imagination and creativity, but offers an opportunity to practice social skills as well as small motor coordination (putting on and taking off clothing, “scrambling” eggs or “cooking” soup or serving “tea”).

Encouragement, appreciation, and patience.
It may go without saying, but here goes anyway: Cheer your baby on as new skills are mastered. Achievement is satisfying to an almost-toddler's fledgling sense of self, but it's extra-sweet when you give it the nod (and a round of applause). Be wary of cheering too much or too often, though, since the idea is to motivate your baby to accomplish more, not to make him or her dependent on the applause. (If there's a standing ovation for every step taken, what does baby do for an encore?)

And speaking of attention, are you wondering when your baby will pay more than a few fleeting moments of it to any activity? Though your little one's skills have advanced by leaps and bounds as he or she totters on the brink of toddlerhood, that attention span definitely hasn't kept pace—especially when it comes to activities that require sitting still (say, storytime or working on a block tower). Be understanding of these very normal limitations, don't push your 1-year-old beyond them, and definitely don't worry—as little ones grow, so do their attention spans.

In the days before parenthood, any season was the season for a trip. Summer fun at a friend's lake house, winter getaways on the beach, last-minute ski weekends, a slow roll through wine country, or a fall tour of changing leaves and B & Bs. All you had to do was pack a bag, maybe score a deal on airfare and hotel … and go.

That was then, and this is now. And now, considering the effort involved in packing up and taking your baby across town to do grocery shopping, the logistics of a 2-week resort holiday (or even a 2-day trip to grandma's) might seem too overwhelming to even contemplate. And far too much like hard work to qualify as a vacation.

Happily, you can have baby … and still travel. Though vacations with your little one aren't likely to be as carefree or restful as they were prebaby, they can, in fact, be both feasible and fun.

Remember those spur-of-the-moment weekend getaways, when a sense of adventure, a few bathing suits, and a pair of flip-flops flung into an overnight bag took you where you wanted to go? Well, those were so last year. With baby's arrival, you can expect to spend more time planning a trip than taking one. Here's how to prep:

Underschedule yourself.
Forget itineraries that will take you through six cities in 5 whirlwind days. Instead, set a slow pace with plenty of unscheduled time—for an extra day on the road should you end up needing it (4 hours in the car were 3 hours too much for your smallest passenger), an extra afternoon at the beach or a morning by the pool should
you end up wanting it (4 museums were 3 too many for everyone involved). In other words, be flexible.

Don't pass on a passport.
You won't be able to take your baby out of the country (including to Canada or Mexico) on your passport. Every traveler, no matter what age, needs his or her own—and you'll need to give yourself enough time to secure one. If you're traveling out of the country with your baby but without your baby's other parent, you may need special documentation showing proof that you have permission from the other parent, or that you are your child's sole legal guardian. For information on obtaining a passport for your baby and other travel information, go to
travel.state.gov
.