[quote author="JVNA" date=1256604498]We limit TV time for our kids. It's kind of tough to do as they are addicted to TV and always ask for it. They only get it during bottle time. My wife's sister is an optometrist and she says that it's bad for their development. It affects their depth perception and can impair their visual development.</blockquote>
When my first kid was born, I had no money for baby stuff, here are some free tricks I learned:
1. If you want entertainment to keep the kid still and quiet for a minute or two (ex. when changing diaper, or when they first wake up in the crib), you can take pictures and masking tape them to the wall (out of baby's reach). The baby will be facinated by the pictures (aka - reused junk mail you thought was interesting looking with pictures of people or different places or objects) long enough to get the diaper changed. If the baby gets bored of the picture - just throw it out, and tape up a different picture. It can be as simple as just tearing off a picture in your junk mail, or you can get creative (I got a bit too creative - cut out things and made it sort of like a pop up book so it was more 3D to increase the depth perception practice - my sister used to laugh at my bizzare pictures and my baby's facination with them and said the kid will either be a genius or demented from looking at all the pictures. Actually, the kid turned out to be an artist
).
2. If you are too broke to buy stacking cups (yes, I know that's a sad statment from my past considering they're only $5 in the supermarket), you can wash your plastic food containers for margerine and so on and they have lots of fun stacking those. I used to feel really guilty about that actually, until all the Chinese toy issues with lead, etc arose years later - although the container may have said margerine on it - at least it was North American food quality plastic, right
?
3. They love the pot and the big cooking spoon - but don't start that one unless you are willing to live with the clanging - once they discover it, forever will they crawl to the kitchen cupboard to try and get it out
.
4. If you can't afford building blocks - they love to stack up kleenex boxes (ex. get a big pack of tissues from Costco).
Of course, for all of the above you want parental supervision with it as it's not been extensively tested for toy safety.
