Santa Baby

This may shock you all, but Christmas is a few days away and we haven’t really bought many items for our son yet. Sounds like a big yikes, but the thing is, since we’re celebrating in California AND in Buffalo, hauling back presents from everyone back to New York is going to be a feat-and-a-half as it is, and I have a feeling babyboy is going to be showered with gifts, so we didn’t really want to add to our challenge. So we thought maybe we’d wait until we got back and get him some stuff once we’re home, and then we could also see what he got and “fill in the blanks”, if you will, with other needs and developmental toys.

The other part of it is that as excited as I am for ~~my baby’s first Christmas~~ feeding my Amazon Mom addiction with buying cool baby toys, I’m also becoming really paranoid and obsessive about picking out all the right gifts for him. Since his birthday is only one month after Christmas, it’s almost as if I have just one shot at this gift buying thing for the entire year, and that’s scary. I mean, I know what he needs right now for a 10 month old, but I have no idea what a two year old needs! Now, if his birthday were in June, then I wouldn’t be so freaked out, because in just six months I could have another round of purchases, but having the right stuff, at the right time, for a rapidly developing, learning, growing human is really important, and so it’s a lot of pressure to get it right. I’ve done a lot of reading and they say a toy to a baby is like a career to an adult; it’s their everyday; their main stimulant, and the most important thing to their mind at that time in their life. So I’ve been Googling and reading reviews like crazy so I can stop feeling paralyzed with the fear that I’m not going to buy all the right toys to last him this entire next year and HB won’t get all over me for the pages of amazon.com line items on his billing statement every week.

So I thought I’d do a little Christmas wish list post for my tot, sponsored by Fat Brain Toys. They have awesome lists complete with full description breakdowns that include prices, photos, educational purpose, age rage most used for which gender graphs, toy value INDEX, SKU numbers, dimensions, toy IQ, ranking, REVIEWS, where it’s made, and even videos showing the toys in action. IN.SANE. and L.O.V.E.!

Top Toy Picks for a One & Two Year Old Boy

I was so excited to find this one. My little one LOVES to play with doors and locks and anything related to metal. He’ll walk over to the cabinet just to open and close it and touch the screws in the hinge. He doesn’t even care what’s inside (most of the time).

Melissa & Doug’s Latches Board: fingers coordinate to grasp & pull, twist & turn, open & shut, open & shut, open & shut… builds fine motor skills, concentration, logical thinking abilities. Children identify color names, recognize numbers, count & name animals.

My husband really wants to get Colt a good set of building blocks. He really loved his when he was little, and he thinks they’re cool, so he’s made it his mission to find the best one and get it for him. But I want these. They look like they can be used earlier on (blocks take a lot of coordination), and they double as a nesting toy (compact storage, bonus!). You can never have too many blocks and legos and building things though I suppose.

Dado Cubes: Toy of the Year Award Creative Child Magazine, allows exploration of proportion, balance, structure & color, this invites visual spatial development & problem solving.

These will be used more when he’s closer to two, but I love monsters for little boys and my little boy LOVES two things in his life that appeal to this toy: throwing, rolling, holding, and carrying balls, and his dad’s golf club head cover, which is supposed to be a blue buffalo, but looks like a monster. So I thought these would be fun. Plus I like that they’re little stuffed animals in the meantime.

Melissa & Doug Plush Monster Bowling Game: teaches colors, counting, concentration, coordination, gross motor abilities, sensory awareness, motor planning, visual tracking, cause & effect, taking turns, friendly interactions.

Match up the pictures and get rewarded with a sound. Adorable and compact. They have an animals one too, but I feel like we sometimes oversaturate our babies with teaching animals and animal sounds that we forget about other stuff in life sometimes. Plus I just love how boyish this is.

Melissa & Doug Vehicle Sound Blocks: helps reinforce cause-and-effect and matching skills.

This is our big ticket item (although it doesn’t cost a big price). I couldn’t decide between a trike and a wagon and a rocking horse, and we can’t very well get all of them, and then I stumbled on this and was sold. It was nominated for tons of awards, and it’ll last him for years and years beyond all the others, too. Just Google it. Trust me.

Plasma Car

This toy is brilliant. I can’t wait until he has the dexterity for this. It looks like it’ll eat up so much time and be really challenging.

Melissa & Doug Basic Skills Board: helps develop manual dexterity, fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination; encourages color recognition.

My boy LOVES cars. Loves them! He’s been pushing them around the house lately and picking them up and spinning their wheels. How do boys know they should love cars? We were at the store the other day and we put him down to walk around and we were on the cusp of the boy and girl toy isle and he went straight for the boy section, it was crazy to me. Why wasn’t he drawn to the baby dolls? I think this playmat is just awesome. Especially since it folds up into a box to store the cars in.

Alex Vinyl Padded Playmat

My husband also got our son the coolest car ever. Kinda pricey, but he called me excited about it, so whatever. It’s flat magnetic blocks that you can arrange in several ways to create a different looking car. Pretty neat.