Sensory Play Fail

So first off, I’d like to say how much I LOVE Pinterest. It gives moms all these great ideas of fun activities to do with your baby, all age groups. I’m always searching for new things to do with Parker, something different from the same day to day routine. New games to play or crafts I can make for her to keep her entertained and learning.

So the other day I decided to try something new with sensory play. I found a pin that showed how to make “sensory bottles”. Now if anyone doesn’t know what these are, they are basically a water bottle filled with different sensory items (rice, pasta, cotton balls, colored water, etc.). You can make it fancy by putting toys in with the rice or sparkle glue in with the water, but at the last-minute mine basically included rice (I went a little extra and threw some food coloring in there), another one was pasta and last I did colored water.

The biggest thing to know about Parker right now is that EVERYTHING goes into her mouth. She is teething, yes, but this has been going on for months. About two months ago, I bought her this sensory toy at Buy Buy Baby. It was a plastic whale that you could fill its body with water and it had plastic fish and starfish that floated around. The point was obviously for the child to push around on the water and watch the ocean creatures move and float around. MY DAUGHTER, however, just chose to chew on the whale tail!

Now she is two months older and I thought it might be a good time to introduce “sensory play” again. Wellllll…I couldn’t have been more wrong. Now granted I didn’t go through all the trouble to make them fancy or specifically go out to buy stuff to create them for her, but it was still a spectacular failure haha. She was just excited that I gave her a water bottle to play with. It was a constant battle of supervision in which she was consistently attempting to chew on the cap of the bottle (talk about dangerous!) and didn’t bother to shake them at all! I kept having to flip the bottles upside down so she could chew on the bottom and not mess with the cap. I would shake them and rattle them around, show her the colors and sounds, talk to her about them…. NOPE, she just wanted to eat the bottle LOL.

(I promise I took it right out of her mouth…this mama doesn’t like bottle caps!)

I don’t know if anyone else’s babies are like this…I like to think so though. It just cracks me up when I see so many posts on Pinterest about things like this that you can do with babies Parker’s age and it is such a struggle for us. I’m not sure if we are the more common situation or if these posters with “sensory play” success is more common. I hope I’m not alone out there! I think it’s AMAZING that other babies out there can start sensory activities so early though. I will keep trying. If anyone out there has any easier sensory activities that they want to suggest that my baby won’t be able to eat…please let me know! I’d love some ideas!!