Baby Play, Home & Wellness Guides
Rugs soften the feeling of timber, tile and concrete floors. They also reduce echoes and create a warmer place for parents and children to sit together.
Carpeted surfaces may help reduce the severity of some minor household falls compared with bare hard flooring. However, a standard rug usually does not offer the same depth of resilient cushioning as a purpose-made foam mat.
The benefits of floor play for babies include opportunities to build strength, coordination, balance and body awareness while practising movements such as reaching, rolling, sitting and crawling. A safe, supervised floor space also allows babies to explore freely and learn through repeated movement.
There are ordinary aunts and uncles, and then there are Cool Aunts and Uncles.
You know the type. They arrive with good stories, questionable amounts of sugar once the kids are older, and gifts that make everyone else quietly reconsider what they brought.
But there is one trap even experienced gift-givers fall into: spending serious money on something that has a spectacularly short baby-life.
First comes the bright foam puzzle mat spreading across the living room like a miniature daycare centre. Then, when the baby finally goes down for the evening, you step over the play gym, move the toys, find your yoga mat, unroll it over the floor and discover that one corner has started curling upwards again.