Gifts, gifts, gifts.

[rivka]

This may be the earliest I've ever been done with my Christmas shopping.

Alex's nanny came for a few hours yesterday so that Michael and I could go shopping together. We got presents for my two RAs, my sister Judy, Michael's father, Michael's stepmother, my brother and sister-in-law's baby-to-be, and Michael's two step-niblings, plus socks to fill up most of the room in Alex's stocking, diapers, formula, a card to hold Alex's nanny's Christmas bonus, new pillows for our bed, and a few miscellaneous household items.

Whew.

And that's after I'd shopped online for my mother, my father, my sisters Debbie and Juanita, my brother and sister-in-law, my nephew and two nieces, Michael, Bill, Alex, Alex's baby friend Zoe, and my sister's baby-to-be. And yes, as a matter of fact, I have suggested to my family that the adults draw names. More than once. They all like to buy presents for everyone. And actually, I do too - it's just that a shopping list with 21 people on it gets a trifle overwhelming.

A few things I'm especially proud of:

• Every time I've talked to my father recently, he's wanted to rant about the religious bankruptcy of the religious right - how they've co-opted and twisted the message of Christianity to suit their political purposes, and how misguided the Left is to allow themselves to be portrayed as anti-religion. So for Christmas, he's getting Jim Wallis's God's politics: Why the Right gets it wrong and the Left doesn't get it, in the Audio CD version because he can't see well enough to read anymore.



• Dad's also getting a pound of dark-chocolate-covered ginger, because I have been his daughter for 32 years and I know well the depths of his heart.



• I managed to be very restrained, shopping for Alex. It was difficult, because OMG it's her first Christmas and toys aren't actually all that expensive compared to adult presents and just look at all the cool stuff out there. But I knew that she'd be getting a lot of presents from the rest of the family, and it's easy to overwhelm a baby, so Michael and I are going with quality rather than quantity. She's getting a "curiosity cube" toy with lots of manipulable parts (which plays to her brand-new small motor skills), a lift-the-flap book, and a jingle bell shaker just like the ones we use at library story hour. I am gleefully sure that she'll love all three things.



• For the baby my sister will be adopting from Guatemala, I was able to find a bilingual English/Spanish version of one of Alex's very favorite books, Where's the Baby?/Donde esta el bebe? It's one of those books that has a mystifyingly strong appeal for the tiny, and I think it will be nice for her to have books in both the baby's intended languages. My Puerto Rican RA approved the quality of the translation, which is of course critical.[1]

[1] I once bought a "take back the night" T-shirt at a college protest which supposedly included the slogan in both English and Spanish. I wore it with pride until a fluent Spanish speaker told me that the Spanish version translated as, approximately, "Pick up the night in your hands and move it towards the back." Oops.

Comments

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I've read that sippy cups aren't very good for children's oral-motor development, and have been linked to speech problems. My perhaps too-idealistic goal was to use a sippy cup to ease the transition from bottle to cup, and then to use an open cup for supervised/assisted drinks and a sippy cup for travel and unsupervised drinks.

[ailbhe]

We take the lid off her sippy cups, when we don't mind a mess, and leave them on when we do (tied to the pushchair, the lid is on). She can handle an open cup fine and has been able to for months. I think we bought the plastic tumblers for table use about 4 months ago - they don't even have handles.

I'm surprised to see a link between sippy cups and oral-motor development. Perhaps some babies drink out of them all the time until they're 3 or 4, or something? I do know I see very big kids drinking out of no-spill baby sports bottles, but who am I to judge a big kid's age?

Ailbhe's Top Tip - serve juice in a sippy cup, not an open tumbler, as it's incredibly sticky when spilled. And avoid sippy cups with funny spouts, they're very hard to clean. I can't find a picture of the ones we use, but they have a tight push-on lid, and a flip-up spout with no valve at all, so if it gets turned upside-down it will spill. Without the lid they just have a straight top, no ridges at the edge, so fine to use lidless.

I don't think your goal is too idealistic, if you add in "and use a sippy cup when Mom is too tired to see straight" as well. That's basically what we do.

And also when

[(Anonymous)]

Aye to all the above. Sippy cups also make it slower for the baby to cause a huge mess when she realises "hey, it's fun when you turn it upside down!". My Lilli is jut two and can drink out of an open tumbler perfectly successfully when supervised, but it's remarkable how she can tip it up in the nanosecond I look away. And in our hot summer weather, cold water or juice on her skin is great fun.

Emma

Re: And also when

[tammylc.livejournal.com]

Yeah, at 19 months Liam is perfectly capable of drinking out of a regular cup. It's just that he thinks tipping cups upside down and pouring water all over himself if the very definition of fun.

We have some disposable reusable sippy cups that don't have valves and thus are perhaps better in terms of the speech development issues. But Liam really likes to use those as shaker bottles and sprinkle bits of liquid all over the house.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised to see a link between sippy cups and oral-motor development. Perhaps some babies drink out of them all the time until they're 3 or 4, or something?

Yes, that's exactly what happens. Or 5, or 6, even, if Mom is uptight about spills. The articles I saw also implicated zero-flow spouts, which children need to actively suck to produce liquid. Apparently that doesn't encourage the development of muscles needed to produce certain sounds like th.

[ailbhe]

Ah! right, well, then I understand the link. And I have a sudden suspicion of Rob's inability to pronounce th, too, though that's at least partially dialect. His father has a horror of mess and his mother pandered and panders to it; I wonder if sippy sups featured heavily?

Anyway, when Linnea drank out of cups to begin with, we used the lids of Avent bottles, because they were small enough to hold about the right amount of liquid. We didn't buy sippy cups until she was drinking much more.