![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Crafting Corner
Dec. 18th, 2005 04:07 pmLike many people are, I'm often boggled by the safety warnings manufacturers feel the need to put on their products to prevent people from killing themselves with them. K's disposable diapers, for instance, warn not to let her near open flame while wearing them (when we switched to cloth diapers, they didn't have the warnings although I'm sure they're just as flammable. Could it be that cloth diaper users are naturally more intelligent, I ask in an officiously smug and obnoxiously self-congratulatory manner?). Just how stupid could people possibly be, we ask ourselves, to try and eat silica gel packets or sit their bediapered baby down on the lit barbeque?
I had put the warnings on plastic bags in the same category. Who would be stupid enough to let their child play with a plastic bag that could easily suffocate them? That's before I discovered the utter and complete joy K showed whenver we put her down near a wastebasket, close enough for her to grab the plastic grocery bag we use as wastebasket liners. I don't let her play with them, of course, but the utter ecstacy she shows when she grabs them and hears them rustling makes me wish I could find a safe way to let her play with them.
Yes, rustling and crinkling things are the baby crack of choice over here at the moment. Last Sunday, when my lunch at Qdoba came with a completely clean wrapper under the plate, I was able to occupy K for the entire meal by handing the wrapper over to her for demolition. I don't normally like to let her have paper because of a traumatic babysitting experience when I was 15, when a baby managed to bite a piece of paper off and then start choking on it, but this paper was heavily waxed and more than equal to K's one barely-above-the-gumline tooth. However, I'm still not about to use paper as a baby distraction method at home when I'm not sitting right next to her watching like a hawk.
So. It being the Christmas season, I've been looking for good toys for K for Christmas that reflect her love of things that rustle, crinkle and squeak (although I don't plan to wrap them - it means nothing to her, and the last thing I need to do is haul these things up to Michigan and then back down again when she'll have plenty of presents from grandparents under the tree). So far, I've found: another squeaking dog toy. I think I may have to resolve in the new year to stop buying my child pet toys. But frankly, they're all I can find. Everything for babies her age lights up and plays music these days, and she hates electronic music. Really, it's not just that we hate them - I've tried multiple times to play her musical stuffed animals for her, and her reaction every time is so traumatized, you would think the toys were singing to her about Bambi's mother getting shot. But the attitude of toy manufacturers these days is that if it can play music, why of course it should! As loudly as possible. And never mind the babies who really like squeaky toys - that's what stuffed dog chew toys are for.
So anyway, the whole point of this complaining is that I'd like to figure out a way to make K a toy that crinkles and rustles and is also safe, since I can't find one to buy (previously, I had great success with the bag from the mail order pharmacy with my pills in it - it was heavy chew-proof plastic, sealed, that rattled as well as crinkling. But sadly, I had to ruin it by opening it to get my pills - me and my stupid heart). My best idea so far is sewing a couple plastic bags into a cloth bag, but I'd appreciate any creative ideas someone who isn't seriously sleep-deprived might have. Any suggestions?
I had put the warnings on plastic bags in the same category. Who would be stupid enough to let their child play with a plastic bag that could easily suffocate them? That's before I discovered the utter and complete joy K showed whenver we put her down near a wastebasket, close enough for her to grab the plastic grocery bag we use as wastebasket liners. I don't let her play with them, of course, but the utter ecstacy she shows when she grabs them and hears them rustling makes me wish I could find a safe way to let her play with them.
Yes, rustling and crinkling things are the baby crack of choice over here at the moment. Last Sunday, when my lunch at Qdoba came with a completely clean wrapper under the plate, I was able to occupy K for the entire meal by handing the wrapper over to her for demolition. I don't normally like to let her have paper because of a traumatic babysitting experience when I was 15, when a baby managed to bite a piece of paper off and then start choking on it, but this paper was heavily waxed and more than equal to K's one barely-above-the-gumline tooth. However, I'm still not about to use paper as a baby distraction method at home when I'm not sitting right next to her watching like a hawk.
So. It being the Christmas season, I've been looking for good toys for K for Christmas that reflect her love of things that rustle, crinkle and squeak (although I don't plan to wrap them - it means nothing to her, and the last thing I need to do is haul these things up to Michigan and then back down again when she'll have plenty of presents from grandparents under the tree). So far, I've found: another squeaking dog toy. I think I may have to resolve in the new year to stop buying my child pet toys. But frankly, they're all I can find. Everything for babies her age lights up and plays music these days, and she hates electronic music. Really, it's not just that we hate them - I've tried multiple times to play her musical stuffed animals for her, and her reaction every time is so traumatized, you would think the toys were singing to her about Bambi's mother getting shot. But the attitude of toy manufacturers these days is that if it can play music, why of course it should! As loudly as possible. And never mind the babies who really like squeaky toys - that's what stuffed dog chew toys are for.
So anyway, the whole point of this complaining is that I'd like to figure out a way to make K a toy that crinkles and rustles and is also safe, since I can't find one to buy (previously, I had great success with the bag from the mail order pharmacy with my pills in it - it was heavy chew-proof plastic, sealed, that rattled as well as crinkling. But sadly, I had to ruin it by opening it to get my pills - me and my stupid heart). My best idea so far is sewing a couple plastic bags into a cloth bag, but I'd appreciate any creative ideas someone who isn't seriously sleep-deprived might have. Any suggestions?
