I know I have waxed on about these blocks before. And I know they are terribly expensive ($128 for a set of five, we bought two sets). But these are, bar none, the best toy we got for our baby.

Update to make the "buy these blocks at Constructive Playthings for $129" link more obvious.

These are huge, vinyl covered foam blocks. They are big, brightly colored, and light, so you can stack them high and knock them down without fear of damaging your baby. They come wrapped in black plastic, like a set of tires from Costco (or is that just a myth?), and ours arrived a little dusty. Our boy has always loved building things, and we're not sure which came first, the blocks or the desire. But he's almost five now, and still using them as much as he did when he was younger.

Here are just a few pictures of what we have done with them:

The rest of the pictures are on Flickr.

Our babies always had trouble sleeping. The first one didn't sleep through the night until he was six months old (though now he could sleep through an earthquake). The second one slept like a dream for three or four months and has woken up at least once every night since then.

We swaddled and breast fed and cradled and sang and walked and did everything we could to get them to sleep. Of all those things, what helped the most was swaddling. Now, swaddling is a bit of an art. You need a big blanket (like the one you stole from the hospital), and you need to be none too gentle with how tightly you fold your baby up. Invariably we wound up using a blanket that was too small, or our boys would manage to get an arm out (with which to whack myself over the head, Daddy!).

But we found something that helped. The Miracle Blanket is a blanket designed for swaddling. It has special flaps for the arms and a pocket for the feet, and it is truly miraculous. It comes in two sizes (last time we checked) and really does work. Don't be thrown off by their "As Seen on TV" style web site.

The other problem we have run into with baby sleeping is how cold it gets at night, especially when we lived North, and during winter. At some point (ask your pediatrician when) you can put a blanket in the crib with your baby, but even then it will be a while before they get the idea of snuggling under it to stay warm. Enter the SleepSack. We bought these in two sizes, too, and both our boys used them. Now with the second boy, we have just ordered some SleepSacks for toddler sized kids, which include foot holes.

These two items are a bit expensive for what you get, but we love them so.

We're on our third baby monitor. The first was some Graco/FirstBaby something-or-other brand whose salient feature was that it had two receivers. We thought (mistakenly) that we'd need two receivers, one we could leave in the kitchen, and one in our bedroom. We were wrong.

This is what we needed: rock solid reception, lots of channels, rechargeable bulletproof batteries, a visible indicator of noise. Our second (and third, I dropped the second on the kitchen floor and it broke) set of monitors are the Sony BabyCall Rechargeable (NTM-910). It works like a dream, which is to say, we never have to think about it.

Set the channels on each piece (they are color-coded for ease). Plug one into an outlet in your baby's room. Plug the other in, say, your kitchen. Charge the receiver. Use. In four years of use (before I dropped it) we did not notice a fall-off in battery power or longevity. We typically plug it in overnight (we don't usually use it at night, we can hear the baby from our room, but when I have, it has lasted all night without being plugged in), and use it during the day. We can carry it out into the yard without getting out of range (it has a very annoying = effective alarm when it loses the signal). When we put the baby down and he is wailing before he gives up and goes to sleep, we can turn the volume down but still see him cry on the bright red lights. It does have a "voice activated" feature we don't use, as it is somewhat masked by the noise machine we have in the baby's room.

It is cheap (about $40 via Google or J&R) and relatively frill-less. And perfect. So perfect we bought another when I dropped the first.

Once you're done with the baby bathtub, you'll need a bath mat for your regular tub. We moved our boys to the regular bath when they were between six months and a year old (when they could reliably sit up and we're reliably splashing gallons of water out of their baby bathtub). The bath mats we found were all small, and we imagined our squirrely kids getting beyond it and onto the slick porcelain of our tub pretty quickly.

Which is why we got the Ulti-Mat (we got it at OneStepAhead for $20 or so). Really, bath mat tech is pretty simple. Rubbery material with suction cups, ideally with some anti-bacterial coating. But this bath mat is extra-big. It covers the entire floor of our bath tub. We've taken it on trips with us to Grandma's house, we love it so much.

There's something else out there called an Ultimat, in blue and clear, but I don't think it is the same thing. I'm not sure.

Note to readers: I'm not getting anything from listing these items. There are no affiliate links or backroom, under the table, behind the kangaroo deals here. Just our honest love for stuff that got us through babyhood. Also, I get to test a cool WordPress plugin, In Series.

As our kids start to move out of babyhood, I feel the need to tell someone about the best baby gear we came across while helping them survive to toddlerhood. I also have a pair of friends about to have a baby (Hi Denny, Hi Aprille!), who probably already have all their gear lined up, but you never know.

First up is the best baby bathtub ever. It has no temperature sensor, no cushy foam pad, no fold and pack features. It is just one, huge piece of molded plastic, but it is still the best baby tub. The Eurobath by Primo. We started our babies in it when they were the barest of infants, with this behemoth of a bath on the counter in our kitchen. The bath contours are molded such that infants can lay in it, safely cradled. Even our squirmiest baby did not manage to upend himself and drown, even while splashing and playing and giggling.

As the kids got older, we first moved the bath to our regular tub (mostly because of the copious splashing going on, the kitchen was getting too wet), then we turned the kids around, so instead of laying down at one end of the Eurobath, they were sitting up at the other end. A word of warning, the splashing only gets more impressive when they can sit up. When you're done, it has a drain feature (though we just dumped the whole thing out, but it can get heavy if you fill it a lot), and you can hang it on a hook to dry out.

You won't go wrong with this thing. Most places are selling it for about $25. BabyCenter users rate it 5/5 stars with 245 comments. Amazon users rate it 4.5/5 stars with 581 comments. BabiesRUs users rate it 5/5 stars on 116 comments.

The manufacturer says it is for birth to 2 years, but we found our boys did better in the tub proper by about a year. We finally gave ours away to friends here in Lawrence. I do wish they'd named it something else though, it feels like I'm endorsing some kind of European singing competition.

As noted in another post, I sing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star to my baby boy when I am putting him to sleep. All I know is the first verse (well, and the strange one about a bat up high like a teatray in the sky, but it turns out that's from Alice in Wonderland) and singing that one verse over and over gets pretty boring, pretty quickly.

I've tried my hand at making up more verses (as have countless other parents, I am sure). I came up with verses that get closer and closer to the ground, going from start to comet, the Sun, a satellite, and finally a firefly. Then I discovered from Wikipedia that the original song has five verses of its own, and is rather lovely. Now I am trying to memorize this:

Twinkle, twinkle little star,
How I wonder what you are,
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky,
Twinkle, twinkle little star,
How I wonder what you are.

When the blazing sun is gone,
When he nothing shines upon,
Then you show your little light,
Twinkle, twinkle, all the night.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are.

Then the traveller in the dark,
Thanks you for your tiny spark,
He could not see which way to go,
If you did not twinkle so.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are.

In the dark blue sky you keep,
And often through my curtains peep,
For you never shut your eye,
Till the sun is in the sky.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are!

As your bright and tiny spark,
Lights the traveller in the dark,—
Though I know not what you are,
Twinkle, twinkle, little star.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are!

Source: Wikipedia on Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star