What do you do with your baby in the morning?

[folklord]

So DD (7 months) wakes up super early and one of us will take her downstairs at 6ish. We then have 2 hours playtime til breakfast but I'm running out of ideas for how to fill the time.

She plays with her toys but loses interest quite quickly
We play music and dance along (sometimes just arm flapping, sometimes literally dancing, depends on if I have any energy )
We look around the house, eg watching the fish

I'm running out of ideas for what else to do in the 2 hours and usually end up watching telly with her 🙈

Just wondering what others do for ideas!

Story time? Nursery rhyme time?

Ive been up since 5am with 9m DD. She crawls around the floor and plays with her toys, i watch Bake Off reruns.

I used to get a big stack of books, on sofa covered in blanket, coffee for me, read to her.

We play with toys quietly / read stories for an hour then at 7 I put cbeebies on while I make breakfast. We eat breakfast watching telly, I have a coffee and then we go up and get washed and dressed. By the time we're ready its time for the rest of the house to get up so we put music on in the playroom or get the noisier toys out!

I wouldn't wait two hours to give breakfast. I give breakfast as soon as baby wakes up about 6:30/7.

Then have a half hour- hour play in the lounge get us ready and go to the park or the beach whilst it's deserted. Back in time for milk and a nap.

When my dc was as little as yours and not as mobile I also set up sensory play (the big silver foil sheet, flashing balls, musical instruments) and had a big play with nursery rhymes playing on the Alexa.

At that age I used to take all the cushions off the sofa and set up sitting room “soft play” and just let her roam. Also we’d sort a big bag of clean washing. Stacking cups were (and still are) a big hit.

I leave in the cot until 7, then CBeebies before breakfast

We do lots of reading 📖

Try to get out of the mindset of needing to entertain her. Babies are curious and will entertain themselves unless you get them used to having constant singing etc on tap! But she's little and it should be easy enough to get this back.

This is quite good:
www.janetlansbury.com/2011/11/how-to-stop-entertaining-your-baby/

What kind of toys does she have? Are they mostly things which have buttons and lights and sounds, or things that she can experiment with and use in different ways? It is tricky at this age as they can't do very much. Try a treasure box/heuristic play, which is where you take a box or basket around the size of a shoebox or smaller and place ordinary or everyday items in there which aren't toys. A key on a key ring, a pine cone, a clean sponge, a kitchen spoon or Tupperware, new spare toothbrush, empty bottle, piece of scrap cloth, etc etc. Any number of things, include a different mixture of objects at a time. The idea is that you don't get involved or show them the items, but they have the opportunity to explore and experiment with them. You just watch the process (while having a cup of tea!) Watching babies and toddlers "do science" is one of my favourite things. You can see their brains whirring - What is this? Can I taste it? How does it sound if I tap it on there? Can I drop it? Does it fit here? Etc etc. Amazing and they're building all that curiosity and experience with the world.

He gets dumped on the carpet with a basket of toys to have a look in while I express on the couch watching milkshake with the toddler. Occasionally i shout his name and he smiles at me.

I sit on the couch and drink vast amounts of tea and watch telly while the baby plays.

Thanks for the responses.

@BertieBotts thanks for the link- i read it somewhere before but lost it and was really annoyed I couldn't refer back! She's got a treasure basket thing but has a few favourite things in it which she gets bored of pretty quickly and she won't look at the rest. She doesn't move around much so she can't reach any toys that aren't right in front of her so I have to keep giving them to her. Toys include lots of interactive things but she gets grumpy if we don't do it with her- I think we may have already got her used to us entertaining.

I'm very impressed at people who get housework done or even out the house! I've got the rolled out of bed no bra look, no chance I could walk out the front door 😂

We started reading to DS in the morning at about that age and still do every day now he’s 2. He comes into our bed with a big pile of books and we usually have 30-60mins of reading with him. I’m sure it’s been great for DS and from our perspective feels like we’re not properly awake. Also second treasure baskets - DS loved his at 7/8/9 months.

Just saw your last post on treasure basket - sounds like you need to rotate the items. DS loved household things like cooking utensils, boxes inside boxes (tiny gift boxes), things with different textures so wood/metal/fabric. I’d just go round the house and see what didn’t look too dangerous and was the right size for him to hold. Best to supervise though!

Keeping 9m dd out of the tv stand, from under the coffee table and encourage her to play with the actual proper toys I spent money on rather than the living room bin!! The stuff memories are made of

DS is six months. I wash and dress him, then stick him in the play gym or bouncer whilst I wash, dress, brush my teeth, then we go to the kitchen and he sits in his high chair watching me make breakfast and coffee, and he has a couple of spoonfuls of my porridge or yoghurt. He might also have a bottle or breastfeed if he woke up particularly early and didn’t have one on waking. He then plays more in bouncer or on play mat/ball pit thing whilst I eat my breakfast, and we either go out for a walk in the pushchair when it gets to nap time, or if the weather is too unpleasant to go out then we have quiet story time and maybe a couple of Hey Duggee episodes until nap time.

I’m back at work now (wfh) so this is the weekend routine, but DP does similar. I still try to go for the early pushchair walk During the week though because I enjoy it and it’s good for us both to have fresh air. I really thrive on the routine, maybe more so than DS!

Loving the treasure basket ideas. I have a bag of stuff for DS - he loves some paper cups, wooden spoon and a ping pong ball - but I need an actual shoebox or storage box to put them all in rather than handing them to him one at a time. Also he tends to have them on his high chair tray, so they usually get jettisoned and then have to go into soapy water for a bit if they’ve landed in the cat biscuits or the bag of dirty teatowels...

@OccasionalNachos are you an early bird anyway? I can't imagine ever managing to get dressed and out the house with the baby before 8. I can barely keep my eyes open 😂

I am reassured that the telly thing isn't just me. I am also thinking I may need to look back into independent play- DD is so reliant on us and whimpers if we don't play with her! Although was particularly fussy this morning. I think it will be easier when she can reach for toys. At the moment she faceplants quite regularly 😭

@folklord yes, I’m a lark should have had a baby years ago! To be fair the first few weeks/months of DS’s life were in lockdown and my motivation was quite low then and I was really anxious and wasn’t dressing (or showering or eating much). May well have been PND but my six week check was cancelled and I’ve seen my HV once so I guess we’ll never know.

Sunny days like today I’d always have tried to be up and out. DS is napping in his crib right now and I am twiddling my thumbs waiting for him to wake so we can go into the garden! TV has been a lifesaver during lockdown though, I had lots of lofty ideals about no screen time until he was at school or some bollocks like that, until lockdown happened and I was stuck in the house with a baby for hours at a time. Duggee, Bing and the Baby Club were a daily feature as soon as DS got to about 3 months and could focus on the iPad. I regret nothing.

High chair toys - either brought or loads of good ideas on Instagram/Pinterest. I used to let mine have a play while I emptied the dishwasher/prepped breakfast/made another cup of tea.

Treasure baskets are great - I did a new one every week. You can just use anything from round the house.

Mine just used to roll from one end of the room to the other and back so that was a good 15 minutes of fun.

We did BLW so mercifully eating took forever - DD could easily spend 45 minutes upwards on breakfast so that used to take up a fair bit of my early morning.

I just always brought mine into bed with me until I was ready to get up. Few books and things for them to look at and go back to sleep! But I was lucky not to have very early risers.

I'm a total night owl but I do sometimes shove some slouchy clothes on and take DS2 for a walk around the block before 9 he is a total nutcase if he doesn't get his exercise! He is nearly 2 though. It's much more of an effort before they can properly walk, and I never bothered then unless we were going to a group or something.

At that age it went something like this;

6:30 wake up, nappy change, downstairs for a bottle and to sort the dog out
7:00 independent play in the living room (treasure basket tat) while I sat with a cup of tea and listened to the news
7:30 get baby dressed and join husband for breakfast
8:15 play upstairs in her bedroom
8:45 curtains closed and quiet reading before nap
9:00 in cot for nap

It sounds really regimented, but like you I always struggled with how to fill the time before first nap. I found that having a routine with little activities helped pass the time. Now she doesn't have bottles anymore, we have breakfast straight away and take the dog for a walk after playtime.

I dread the day she drops her morning nap. She's 13 months so it might not be long!

Toddler still wakes up at 5/5.30ish. Needs to be up by 6 anyway in term time due to going to PIL while we work, but if she’s not happy to stay in her cot she comes into our room and watches book animations on Prime.

When she was little and I was on mat leave, we used to just go into the living room with some milk and I’d let her entertain herself with toys while we watched the news/caffeinated ourselves.

Honestly don’t fall into the habit of trying to entertain all the time. You’ll have plenty of calls of MUMMA, PLAY throughout the toddler years!