I agree - Nikita, great stories!!  The shoes and the bears - how fabulous are they!! Wow.

what a great topic!  Karma point to you, chispa.

Yep, the ones you mentioned (Brown Bear - and everything else by Eric Carle, the No David! books by David Shannon, and anything by Sandra Boynton) are definite favorites in our family.  I'll have to check out the others you wrote about - as those are yet to be discovered in our house.   

We have also loved "What makes a Rainbow?" by Betty Ann Schwartz, "I love the Alphabet" by Dar Hosta, and "Ruby in her Own Time" (our daughter loves this one still, and my hubby and I really found it helpful to help us resist comparing her to all of her friends when she was younger).  Although no one has ever heard of it, my daughter's favorite book right now is "Gakky Two Feet" by Mickey Dolens.  She also goes around quoting her favorite parts from the "Skippy John Jones" books.  Ah, so many good books out there, so little time... happy reading all!

You all are right - this could be renamed the Backyardigans thread.  I will continue in that vein here...

Just wanted to report that we did in fact do a Backyardigans party for our little man - and everyone had a great time!  I found a balloon company that sells the "oh so cool" shape balloons - just imagine one and two year olds dancing around with three-feet-tall balloon versions of the five characters from the show while listening to all the great songs from some of the episodes!  (Yes it was a splurge, but so well worth it - they are still hanging out with us in our living room weeks later - we just filled them with regular air, not helium).  We also had a character "bounce" - my daughter had little stuffed figurines from the show (thanks to her gramma a couple years back) and we placed all of them on a big white sheet - all grabbed on to the edges of the sheet and shook and shook until they all were bouncing high in the air (think "parachute" game seen in baby gym classes).

Of course, his cake had to have Backyardigans characters on it - so I just "fashioned" some out of fondant, stuck 'em on the cake, and he dove right in! (picture massive amounts of chocolate crumbs everywhere)  Someone once told me to use chocolate cake for their first birhthday cakes b/c it shows up better in pictures - it was great advice!

Anyway, it was tons of fun - thanks for letting me share here with all of you!

Lots of great suggestions already.  I definitely agree with books, books, books!  It is so great to get those "book handling lessons" in early.  This is also the age when "empty-fill" is so big in their little lives.  That means any toy that has parts that can be emptied out (e.g., a shape sorter as nhockaday noted) and then filled up again is going to captivate this age group. You can extend the empty-fill play to bath time by giving the child cups of various sizes and show him/her to fill one cup using water poured from another cup.  My kiddos have a great set of colored nesting cups in the shape of fishes that stay in the bathroom for just that purpose!  Have you also seen the crayons and alphabet cards that are designed to be played with in the tub?  The child can write all over the tub with the special crayons and then his/her creations and be washed away (with some cleaning and "elbow grease").  I think those were a Baby Einstein product.  A really inexpensive toy that you can use in the tub are foam alphabet and number puzzles (you can find these in dollar stores).  My daughter loved popping out all the letters - they float on the water, they stick to the side of the tub.  This means you can work on letter recognition, sequencing (what letter comes after "g" or before "z"?), and even early word formation (spelling out simple words using the puzzle pieces) all while getting your children squeaky clean!

Also agree with KL - love the LeapPad - my daughter (nearly five) has graduated to the Leapster, but we just pulled out the LeapPad for our son (now big boy one!!) to start playing with.  He already loves it - the great thing about it are the pages feel like paper pages, but they are coated and are therefore really durable.  They can really withstand his endless page turning!  It also has different levels of functioning - it truly was a toy that grew with our first born!

Hi Maggie -
I have heard of people doing this - it is a great idea.  Thanks for sharing it here!

So I just had fun playing with listing a TEST auction.  Here are my thoughts.  First, I think this is a fantastic opportunity for folks b/c the readers of and contributors to this forum share common interests and will likely value the opp to sell/swap each other's items (also for those of us who are too nervous about peddling our wares elsewhere!  )

When I filled out the fields (for starting price, shipping), I honestly did not really attend to the restrictions listed to the right of each blank.  Instead, I filled in the popular "0.99 cents" seen elsewhere.  When I went to post the auction, I received an error message (to alert me to the fact that I had filled these in incorrectly).  When I scrolled down to change the two numbers that were in error, it had wiped out several fields and I had to fill them all in again.  (note: my item description was still there - so that was a good thing).  I ended up having to do this twice (b/c the second time I made another error) which got me to wondering if perhaps there could be a way to retain the other info so people wouldn't be caught in a loop of filling in the same info repeatedly.  Mayhaps it will be a "non-issue" (maybe others will pay more attention to rules than I did)?

One other thing: I'm sure there is a reason for the restriction of the amounts having to be in 0.25 increments?  Just wondering. 

Other than those thoughts, I think it was a pretty easy process and again, a great idea!

TEST - this auction is for a gently used infant tub.  Comes with a mesh infant sling (sits down in the infant tub) and tub converts when infant is ready to sit while being bathed.  Shipping price is for US addresses only.  Please contact me prior to bidding for shipping costs to other locations.  Thanks for looking at my auction!  Happy bidding.  TEST

here's an attempt at a story that highlights rhyming and early word endings.

Title: The New Toy by lawrencelb

Slide 1:  Here is a boy.  He wants a toy.

         Image: boy standing; "thought bubble" above his head filled
                   with a ball, a top, and some blocks

Slide 2: Where can he go?  He wants to know.

         Image:  boy standing; "thought bubble" now filled with various   
                    buildings

Slide 3: You can get a toy from a shop.  It is too far to hop.

         Image: mom standing next to boy, mom's "talking bubble" filled
                   with "from a shop"

Slide 4: He rides a train.  It starts to rain.

         Image: boy and mom riding a train; rain is falling from the sky

Slide 5: The boy gets to the shop.  He buys a new top.

         Image: boy inside shop, reaching for the top

Slide 6: The rain is done – out comes the sun!  He has lots of fun.

         Image: boy is outside and is playing with his top; it is sunny

thanks- I've missed everyone too - work got busy and crazy and I found myself with no time to even check in for awhile.  I think I have a lot of catching up to do!!  Looks like lots of new downloads and new features to "play" with.  Take care and bye for now.

Oh yea! Love the extension - I am a procrastinator by nature - had some ideas but not enought time - mayhaps this weekend I can get my act together. 
To everyone - your entries are great and inspiring.  Nikki, I LOVE your stories-so creative!

Thanks again for letting us have the weekend! 

^ Annabelle had to have "ann" in her name b/c all of the women in our family on my dad's side + my mom have "ann" in them - Nathaniel had to have 9 letters and three syllables to balance Annabelle's name - I'm a bit of a freak about symmetry too (and we wanted to use a biblical name)

> I used to be a memorizing freak (still recall all 52 prepositions learned in 6th grade and have pi memorized to the 27th or 28th digit) - totally useless info cluttering my brain!   

v who is your favorite children's author and why? 

thanks for the info!

you bet, Jem -
 So - do you have an interest in learning more about teaching babies because you work with youngsters or just to expand your own knowledge at this point?  Just curious!

Thanks - I think Lappy made it sharper with something on her end...
I still want to see if I can get their mugs a bit larger. 

BTW - How did you add the tag "I'm Gabriel's mommy"?  Is that under user info too, and I just haven't looked?  Thanks!

Leanna, how did you do yours?

Mine was just an unedited pic from Photoshop - I'll have to try resizing it later tonight.