telling a toddler about mummy's pregnancy

[wmf]

my ds will be 2 1/4 years old when no2 arrives. he loves books and reading. can anyone suggest any books they found good for introducing a toddler to the idea that they're going to have a brother or sister?

wmf, my 21 mth old dd has recently been fascinated by all the Tony Ross books, particularly I Want A Sister (or "pincess" as dd calls it). it's not a very thorough explanation of the whole baby thing, but just gently explains that a baby is coming home & you can't choose whether it's a boy or girl - and it's not like having a dog!

i say a fantastic one recently called "The House in Mummy's Tummy". can't remember the author but maybe a search on amazon will find it. not that it's an issue in our house!!!

good luck!

There's a nice one called "Za Za's baby brother" about a family of zebras! can't remember who it's by tho'sorry.

There is a beautiful book called "A Baby for Grace" written by Ian Whybrow, lovely pictures and a good story from the little girl's pov. We found it at the library; they could probably get it for you if they don't have it at the moment. Another nice one (with a "big brother" instead of a big sister!) is "Little Hippo's New Baby" by Harriet Ziefert, published by DK. It has flaps! We read this over and over, and finally gave it to a friend who was having her second baby. HTH!

Another vote for 'A Baby for Grace' - my dd loved it - although we turned it into 'A baby for Kate'.
The best thing I found though for having a new one (Kate was 2 when ds was born) was talkinga lot about what babies can and cant do. She knew about babies only drinking milk, doing lots of poos, not being able to walk etc and we made our own baby scrapbook with pictures of baby things and she loved to look at that more than anything, as well as her own baby photos.

Zsa Zsa's baby brother is brilliant. It's by the same woman who writes Maisie Mouse (Lucy Cousins?). We got it out of the library and Jenny loved it as a story before we 'broke the news' - when I was about 5 months. We then had to keep getting it 're-stamped' until after her brother arrived. 'Topsy and Tim and the new baby' was another good one

There is a new book about brothers and sisters from the raisingkids site and I'm showing off about it because they used some quotes from their boards and lil' old me is in it!!!! I'm not sure who publishes it but I will try and find out for you. Apart from my 15 minutes of glory, Arthur's New Baby Book is really sweet for little ones and has lift-up flaps and things that toddlers really go for. Or have you tried asking your little boy to write his own book for the baby, I did this with my two girls when my youngest was born and they are priceless, if a bit scribbly! Like, obviously, the baby won't be able to read it but the big girl wrote stuff like "momma wil SHOUT but i wil not" (younger girl just drew things so the baby would know where it was going to live) and we bring them out on birthdays, it's so-o-o-o-o sweet and a lovely memento now mine are older.

thanks, everyone, time to do my homework now!