Pregnancy Day by Day Tip #9: How to Trick Out Your Baby’s Crib

One of our “things we did right” was to create a nursery and a crib that our son finds interesting and worth his time. This results in a lot of extra sleep for us, as he is often willing to play himself back to sleep in the middle of the night and play quietly for a while in the mornings. There are a lot of dos and don’ts about crib and nursery decor – mainly for safety reasons. But you can still create a room that is fun and interesting enough to give you some extra zzzs without endangering your child in any way.

1.  Walls: While you should not hang anything over the crib or on the wall where the crib stands, you can do a lot with the other spaces. Brightly colored quilts, stencils of animals and letters, and embroidered fabrics with fun shapes and characters are all lightweight or weightless ways to put a lot to look at on the walls without hanging lots of frames or other heavy items, such as shelves or lamps.

2. Mobiles: Not only did we use a mobile on our son’s crib up until its 4 month limit (the age where they can pull it down), we put a paper mobile with brightly colored dinosaurs in another corner of the room and even more shapes above the changing table. What’s more, when he outgrew the crib mobile, we took at the rotating part but left the musical base. Now he punches the familiar tunes on and off when he wants to hear them.

3. Mirrors: Sassy makes a great crib mirror that is safe and lightweight. Our son still likes his, and enjoys playing with it. Even young babies find mirrors fascinating. This is a must-have for a fun, sleep-friendly crib.

4. Window clings: You have to put them well out of the child’s reach, but the gel-like window clings that stick to glass are a fun and easy way to add something interesting to your child’s room. The sunlight really makes them pop, and they come in all different shapes and sizes.

5. Toys in the crib: While you have to make sure that the items are all safe for young babies and don’t help them climb out of the crib in any way, there are a variety of fun toys (especially toys intended for strollers) that you can use to decorate the edge of a crib. These are especially helpful for encouraging playtime in the morning.

6. Change it up: As with toys and books and everything else in a young child’s life, their attention spans are so short that they really benefit from a regular change in choice. While playroom toys work well on a weekly schedule, crib toys can stay a little longer (more like a month).

What do you do to encourage your child to observe and interact with their room and their crib? What tricks work for you? Let us know! We want to hear about it.

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Tagged as: animals, babies, nursery decor, safety reasons, shapes and sizes, stencils, zzzs