Doing the “Stay Home Mum” job all by yourself during the day can be tricky when your child is an active toddler who requires full supervision at all times. I’ve been blessed the past few weeks as my mum is staying with us and we could take turns looking after Micah while the other does some chores or has a shower, etc. As soon as my mum goes back to Malaysia this Sunday, I will be left all alone again during the day to juggle Micah, chores and getting enough sleep. 

Whenever Micah is awake and active, and I just need a few minutes to go off and do something and be able to leave him someplace safe where I know he can’t hurt himself… I would usually place him in the bouncer, or the swing, sitting on his high chair, or even in his cot. Those are the few places I know he can’t hurt himself or get into too much mischief unsupervised. We did set up a playpen a few months ago but that almost doesn’t work anymore because he could pull himself up to a standing position on those fences and being not fully stable yet he could easily fall over. Plus the playpen does not exactly have the strongest, sturdiest fences so he could also fall on top of those fences.

So recently we discovered we could set up another place where we know he will happily play in and be safe unsupervised for a short period of time. We set up his portacot and created a ball pit. It’s pretty cool and he absolutely loves it! The portacot is very steady and no matter how crazy he climbs onto the walls of the portacot to stand up, it will not topple over and the material is fairly solid and does not look like it will tear or anything even if he puts his entire weight on it. Plus the cushion mattress (and the soft plastic balls) means that he can fall over as much as he wants in his ballpit and not get hurt. It is brilliant!

We bought a bag of 105 plastic balls from Baby Bunting for $25. I suppose we could use more balls to fill up the ball pit more but Micah doesn’t need them at this stage. He is quite happy to play with whatever he can get his hands on at this stage and is very content. Plus, the fact that it IS a portable cot means that we can set it up anywhere in the house. Very convenient!

BUT like all things and all toys, toddlers can very easily get bored so I’m trying not to let him play in his ball pit too often so he will still find it exciting next week when my mum is gone and I would actually NEED the ball pit to keep him entertained!