movers & shakers (cheap baby rattles/music makers)

As his activity in utero foreshadowed, FB is quite the wiggler. In fact, that’s one of our  nicknames for him: “The Wiggler”. Diaper changes turn into 15 minute wrestling matches that leave me exhausted. My main goal in any diaper changing/dressing situation with FB is to get the diaper on before he turns over and starts crawling away. Most often, I get the first tab in place, then he turns, raises his leg like a baseball pitcher, and we’re off to the races. I think he sees the placement of the first diaper tab as some sort of signal to bolt. Part of my pre-diapering routine with him includes grabbing whatever interesting objects I can find lurking nearby in an effort to keep him distracted until I have the clean diaper secured.

I don’t often find “recycled” crafts ideas that strike my fancy, but two blogs--Michele Made Me and Minieco—have inspired me to take a second look at some of the “trash” I throw out.  Given our recent medical adventures, we’ve been paying our local pharmacy well, and have accumulated quite the collection of empty prescription bottles.  Usually I throw these out as soon as they’re empty, but I had this idea . . . 
The beauty of prescription medicine bottles is that they are childproof and just the right size for little hands.  After a thorough washing and drying, I prettied them up a bit with cardstock and stickers,





added interesting noisemakers inside,



(Above, left to right: barley, jingle bells, dried pasta, marble, popcorn)



screwed on the caps, and voila!  Instant baby rattles or music shakers for the bigger kiddos.  Now I have something handy to give FB when I want him to lay still for a diaper change (it sometimes works).


A few tips/ideas:

• As you can see in the photo above, drool can destroy these pretty quickly.  I considered covering the cardstock with packing tape or clear contact paper, but I didn’t feel like wrestling either into place and I wasn’t super excited about putting more plastic in baby’s mouth.
• Cut the long edge of your paper (the part going around the bottle) with 1/2” to 3/4” extra for overlap.  There is a slight bit of taper to the bottles and the overlap will help account for this.
• I didn’t do anything with the lid or bottom of the bottle as that was too fussy for me.
• Make sure bottles and lids have no cracks, etc., and close securely before letting little ones play with them.  And, if you have a miniature Houdini on your hands, I’d skip them altogether!

Shake, rattle, and roll!