Little newborn babies sleep in the cot all day... it's a stage we all miss as they grow out of it very fast and soon they will be sleeping less and needing your attention more.
As my elder girl got a bit bigger, we started putting her into the reclined rocker. She's often sitting inside with her Sophie the giraffe teether, but soon it gets too boring for her. She wanted to flip and she couldn't in the rocker.
Being a clueless first time parents, we first bought the cheapest jigsaw-puzzle style foam mats but I quickly decided that they're quite useless. They couldn't stay in place, dent easily, and somehow they leave an oily residue on the floor when removed. Then, I went out to buy the cheapest play mat available. The lightweight playmat was bought from Toys R Us. It cost around S$50 and it was so light, I helped my friend buy too and I could actually bring both home with no difficulty. The play mats were single-sided, rolled up and very light. However, soon I realized the difficulty in using this play mat - the lightweight ends kept rolling up when we wanted the mat to be unrolled and stay flat on the floor. I didn't like that as the mat would become a hazard with the ends sticking out and tripping people. In the end, we bought another play mat and this was used as a 'protection' from the wall instead, as shown in the piccy below. There was this period of time when I stayed over at my parents' place with my elder girl as my own place was under renovation. With only one single bed against the wall, she slept between me and the wall and we had to make sure she won't hurt herself if she flipped towards the wall and hurled her limbs onto the wall. This lightweight play mat actually becomes the ideal solution as we let it stand between the wall and the single bed.
At one of the motherhood fairs, we came to a booth selling Parklon play mats and my hubby suddenly decided that we should get one. I was surprised as the Parklon play mat was expensive and both of us were hesitant to spend too much on items which our baby would quickly outgrow. Fortunately, we went ahead to get this sturdy and heavy play mat. It is one of our greatest investment on items for our children. I enjoy playing on it with my elder girl, doodling with her or reading to her. She learnt to crawl and learnt to walk on this play mat. We confined all her toys on the play mat and she only plays her toys on the play mat too. We used it for close to two years before we rolled it up and kept it in the storeroom for a while...
And now my younger girl's using it too! My baby girl enjoys rolling on it... in fact she flips so quickly that she's often rolling out of the mat before we realized it. I love the double-sided play mat and how both sides were so vibrant, with lovely pics of Winnie the Pooh and his gang, plus words for the children to learn. The best thing about this play mat is that no matter how we put heavy things that exert high pressure on the mat, the dents will soon go away and the whole mat will be as good as new again. In fact it can either be rolled up or folded up without going out of shape. It's gonna last and last and we can use this for a long time... I'm already planning that in future, it can be put into our little reading room in our new place, where the girls can sit down on the mat to read their books. :D
I was wondering if there're other similarly excellent play mats in the market and recently my friend
Audrey who runs TLO told me that she's bringing in the
Yelly Mat from Korea. I absolutely love it and how I wish this was selling in Singapore when we were looking for play mat for my first girl~ This play mat is not just a great mat, it's interactive too! Check out this video!!
This super cool play mat is only available at
TLO ^^
