A friend gave me a hand-me-down “excer-saucer” and I’ve decided every parent should have one.  I love my son and I try to hold him as much as possible, but there are times when he is awake and I just can’t hold him.  (Every parent experiences this.) Most often, it is in the morning when I am trying to get both of us ready to leave the house–me for work and him for daycare.  If I put him back in the crib, he understandably gets annoyed.  I don’t want to put him on the floor, so I put him in the excer-saucer and he loves it.

He is still young, so I can’t leave him there for too long.  But the 5-15 minutes it gives  me to pack his  bag and my breast pump is precious.   I don’t want him to learn that the excer-saucer is a holding pen for when I don’t have time for him, so I make sure I play with him at random variables of time while he is  in it.  (I seem to recall from some college psych class that random positive  reinforcement is the most successful Pavlovian training, but I could be wrong.)  I also make it a point to take him out of it as soon as I get the indication that he’s had to much.  So far it is working well and he loves it.  I have pictures to prove it.

Really.  He does love it.  He just don’t love smiling for the camera.