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Think
Small
Be
good to the parents on your list—choose gifts that will make
life with a new baby a little smoother
The
shower is long past. The baby is here. The parents have
made noises about “Don’t worry about us, just get stuff for
the kid.” You’re not sure whether to believe them.
You can deftly navigate these waters by remembering the adage
that happy parents make happy babies. After all, Grandma will
load the little one up with Baby Einstein and stuffies, and
she doesn’t wait for the holidays. You can’t compete in that
vein anyway. Instead, go for some of the gifts below, which,
while on the baby theme, mostly make life easier, happier,
and/or more comfortable for the parents themselves.
A
pro account on Flickr. With a pro account, the parents
get unlimited storage and 2 GB a month of uploading bandwidth
for pictures of their darling. And since Flickr is a photo-sharing
site, not a photo selling site, the photos aren’t going be
deleted if they don’t order prints every year. This is also
a gift for the parents’ friends and family: They can keep
up-to-date however and whenever they like without having to
become a member of the site, having their invitation link
expire, or being pestered to buy things. And it just might
cut down on the e-mail messages you receive, full of humongous
attached files. If you want something physical to pair this
gift with, go for a super-huge digital-camera flash card.
Nursing
tops. Sure, a mother doesn’t need a specially
designed shirt in order to breastfeed. But if she wants to
wear a one-piece dress, or keep her midriff warm in winter,
or just have something that requires less bunching of fabric,
actual nursingwear is a real bonus, especially something fun
and stylish.
Of course no child lives on milk alone forever. That six-month
mark can sneak up on parents. They probably have thought of
spoons and bowls and a high chair, but you can add:
Long-sleeved
eating smocks. Bibs are for dribbles. Drool. Maybe spit-up.
But anyone who’s seen a baby start to eat food knows that
a regular bib is a laughable defense. Long-sleeved smocks,
open in the back, are more what’s called for. Easy to wipe
down, and providing serious coverage, they are a boon to parents
already creaking under the laundry load.
Snack
Trap. A brilliant bit of engineering went into the very
simple Snack Trap. It’s a cup with a lid that is made of several
soft-edged flaps. It’s easy for kids to stick their hands
through to fish out Cheerios (or organic kamut puffs, or Doritos),
but if turned upside down, it won’t pour said foodstuffs all
over the floor. (Parents who’ve used them tell me a few pieces
will escape—but that’s still quite an improvement.)
A
good food processor with a mini chopping bowl. The right
tools, including single-serve freezer cubes and a baby-food
mill, make whipping up some homemade baby food a million times
easier. But a good food processor makes it onto this
list in particular because it also makes whipping up some
nutritious and fun meals for the parents quicker and
easier.
A
copy of Itsy Bitsy Yoga. Unless you’re the
evangelical type, it can be wise to steer clear of giving
parents books on parenting that will weigh in on any of vast
array of matters of dispute. If they want more input, they’ll
ask. But Itsy Bitsy Yoga adds rather than argues. Written
by a yoga instructor who taught parent-and-baby yoga classes,
it offers a series of “poses,” separated by developmental
stage (newborn, head-holders, almost sitting, almost crawling),
that promise to help babies sleep, digest and develop better.
It’s fun and easy, and sometimes can calm a screaming fit
when nothing else would.
gDiapers.
These are only for certain new parents: the ones agonizing
over their diaper choices, whether struggling with cloth or
consumed with guilt over disposables, but either way not quite
comfortable with the alternative. As long as they don’t have
old, partially clogged pipes, a gift of a gDiaper starter
pack—flushable, bio degradable liners in washable covers—could
be just the ticket to resolve their angst.
Stroller
handle extenders. Like so many other products,
strollers are designed to fit a very small range of “normal”
size. So when parents are possessed of a large height difference,
or even just when at least one is quite tall, pushing the
stroller either falls unequally on the shorter one or causes
tall achy backs. Make dad do his share—or at least give his
back a break—with some stroller-handle extenders.
Ergo.
Baby-wearing is wonderful, and there are a zillion different
slings, wraps, and other contraptions. Each parent will have
different preferences, often varying by situation. But if
you know a parent who is having trouble with tense, sore shoulders
from baby-carrying, consider giving them an Ergo, so named
for a design that distributes weight nicely down to the hips
and across the chest.
A
thread-ripper and some stickers. Let’s put it this way:
No one wants to end up staring at dire warnings of suffocation
and strangulation long enough that they know that the Spanish
version on the Pack ’N Play and the French version on the
crib have typos in them. (Who, me?) Offer a fight-back pack
of a thread ripper and some strong-adhesive colorful stickers
to cover the tougher ironed- or printed-on warnings.
Backtalk.
Nothing helps sleep deprivation like a little attitude. Give
the kid—or the parents—some clothes that go beyond cute and
sweet. For example: Gabbybaby onesies that say things like
“I’m not staring at you, I’m pooping.” and “Please don’t ask
my daddy if he’s ‘babysitting.’” or Moms Rising’s (adult)
T-shirt with Rosie the Riveter lifting a baby on her muscled
arm.
—Miriam
Axel-Lute
2006
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