Your Highness, the Baby. Review on Choosing Gifts for a New Born Baby

The happiest days are when babies come

• Melanie Wilkes in Gone with the Wind

And I agree.

I just love babies – I adore their funny, droll expressions, their baby-soft pink skin, their chubby feet, their enchanted eyes, their little hands and long eyelashes. If you want to start believing in life again, look into the round, black, eyes of a newborn baby. If you look close enough, you may be able to see fairies and stardust there.

Yet, I have learnt to respect babies too. Anyone who can kick up such a storm just because they haven’t been fed at a certain hour, minute or second simply commands respect.

The best way to de-stress yourself is to spend time with these funny guys, listen to their soft breaths, hear them cooing and talking to themselves and wait for that special baby smile which comes sometimes as your reward for being so patient. Give your finger to them and watch them grip it and hang on it as if their life depended on it. Watch them flail their   pudgy hands in the air in an attempt to catch the breeze, sunbeams and moonlight. Watch them drift off in a peaceful sleep as they are rocked gently. I wonder what new borns dream about – Bottles of milk, I suppose. Probably, they dream of swimming in an ocean of creamy milk under a starry night.

Before I lose my perspective, let’s get to the review: What are the best gifts for these little guys? * I  really don’t know. * I have never been successful in having a satisfactory dialogue on gifts with these uncooperative fellows and I doubt that anyone has.

Babies sure can leave us all guessing. They receive gifts with a royal air as they sit on their baby thrones. They are known to treat gifts with supreme indifference and an enviable air of detachment. Unlike grownups, they do not gush over gifts or giggle in a silly way. Neither do they thank us for our gifts nor they profess any opinion about them. Probably it is something to do with the fact that they just can’t, yet I would choose to give them respect where it’s due. So we’ll just have to wade through by our intuition and some introspection.

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Clothes

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Everyone needs clothes, but babies seem to need more of them than others. To put things politely, that’s because babies do not care to maintain clothes the way we do. They need a change of clothes every two hours –or maybe, three hours. I don’t want to hurt the dignity of Your Highness, the Baby by pointing out exactly why they need a change so frequently. Of course, they will kick up a fuss when you change them but if you dare to leave them with ‘must-change-now’ clothes, the noise they will create may have you running for cover.   So get them clothes, dozens and dozens of them. Make sure the clothes are soft  and comfortable- babies don’t take kindly to hard buttons or prickly collars.

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Rattles  

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If something gets the little tykes going, it’s rattles. I wonder what it is about these noisy toys but it does keep them amused for hours. I guess it’s something to do with the fact that they can actually hold it in their fat hands and controlits noise. Probably Baby, Your Highness needs to feel in control – at least sometimes and rattles are the perfect outlet for his/her control-freakiness. So gift Your Excellency his instrument for ruling his limited world even though you may have to stuff cotton in your ears or go insane.

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Baby Juke box

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Babies love music – though they abhor rock music. They can go red in the face yelling if they happen to listen to Bruce Springsteen telling everyone that he was born in the U.S.A. or Bryan Adams reminiscing about the Summer of ’69. They want it soft. And they want it soothing.  So let peace prevail in Babydom(Baby’s Kingdom). Gift them some sitar, santoor or flute music and watch a lovely smile light up their faces. Pat yourself on the back – you’ve made Baby’s day.

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Talk to them

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Yes, do that. They love being talked to. Though they may appear lost in their own world, they are dying to communicate. They want to put their points across – they have thoughts, ideas and  arguments and they want someone to share them with. Never heard them? Probably you were not listening closely enough.

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