Mr. Rabbit has been with us since St. Nicholas and has become little gosling’s naptime buddy at school, his “doudou” – the first one ever. He picked up Lemu from a pile of stuffed animals strategically located closed to the cashier desk in a supermarket some weeks ago. We had been cuing for quite a while and he was eyeing a number of animals before I told him we could only take one of the smallest. They go with us everywhere; if by any chance one of them gets left behind, we need to come back home and fetch them. He goes to sleep at night with them, too. 

With the school now closed due to Coronavirus (first time we all three are together alone on a working day), I took little gosling out of the house for a stroll so that daddy could do some work. With the almost complete lockdown we’re in, I decided we should go buy nappies and I was fixated on buying the big pack of 80+. They only have that in a hypermarket 20 minutes walk from home. We started off walking, which little gosling does running, I pushing the pram along. He got tired quickly and accepted to climb into it. Mr Rabbit and Lemu were hanging from his hands. And we started the 20 minutes walk to the shop. 

Half way along, I stumble onto Mr. Rabbit, who had fallen off. I give it back to baby, reminding him we need to take care of our friends or risk losing them. He was in that state of numbness before falling asleep. I quickly notice Lemu was not there; he points backwards and says “there”! We turn the pram around and walk back our steps a couple of hundred meters to where Lemu was lying flat on the sidewalk. I put Lemu in my backpack and we resume the journey to the shop. 

By the time we reach the shop, baby is asleep, holding Mr Rabbit by one hand. I got what I needed and start my way back. The streets are empty so I walk on the street to avoid the cobblestone. There is one stretch I cannot go around, though. When we’re five minutes away from home, I decide to cut through a park, without realising it would be a harsher terrain. Little gosling starts fidgeting and eventually wakes up crying. He says he wants a hug, so I take him out, we play with the leaves in the bushes around the park, look nostalgically towards the playground nearby, closed due to the virus, and continue the journey on foot. In two minutes, it hits me. We don’t have Mr. Rabbit. Baby asks if we lost him and asks to go back and find him. 

I called daddy for reinforcement. It would take us forever to redo the trip to the shop with baby on foot, whilst carrying a heavy backpack and pushing the pram. He’s with us in 10 minutes. Baby lets himself be convinced of climbing back into the pram and we take the journey back. We do the exact same route,  no sign of Mr. Rabbit. In the shop, no trace of it. I ask the people placing the products on shelfes, the people at the cashiers, nothing… I came out tears in my eyes and tell baby we had lost Mr. Rabbit. No reaction – I was more emotional than he was. 

We took the same route back home, talking about ways we could get an identical rabbit amidst the lockdown. Half way through, we cross the cobblestone patch I could not avoid earlier and daddy lifts his gaze off the ground and I hear him say “there it is!” Mr. Rabbit was lying on a stack of chairs folded outside a closed restaurant. We had only looked down the first time… 

That’s how I reached my 10 000 steps a day. Mr. Rabbit and Lemu are drying on the heater in my bedroom, I see them over the tablet resting there. They’ll be warm and ready when little gosling wakes up for his “tsitsis” tonight and crawls into our bed.

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We have many puzzles, all wooden, the type that requires babies/toddlers to match the pieces to their respective shapes sculpted into the board. We have puzzles with animals, domestic and wild, with means of transport, dinosaurs and fruits, with numbers 1-10 and with the alphabet. 

Little gosling got them progressively since he was about 1. During a routine check-up with his paediatrician, he took interest in a big wooden farm puzzle the doctor had on a baby-size table in his consultation room, whilst we grown-ups conversed. Thereafter, we started hunting for puzzles in the children stores. 

We got one with dinosaurs – cute, lively coloured baby dinosaurs, first. He loved playing with it. I know nothing about dinosaurs and my conversation consisted in comparing them with animals, like the “swan-like dinosaur, with a long neck”, or the “chick-like dinosaur, hatching out of an egg”. 

Next, we found one with farm images, animals, a tractor. It had big pieces, with sizeable differences in shape, in theory, easier for babies to get right. It features a sun, though, which is harder to fit in. At first glance, it appears the rays would fit in any way, but it only works in one position. For quite a while, little gosling would get frustrated (and he’s quite vocal, short, punchy sounds) and ask for help to fit that one in. He lost interest in this one months ago. Too easy… 

Around 18 months we bought more. He enjoyed them so much and we found them an amazing educational and entertaining tool. He can focus on them for a long time, much longer than many other activities. We take our time to learn the attached words, maybe associate them to a song (in the case of the means of transport), to words (in the case of the letters) or the respective sounds (in the case of the animals). We tell him about the colour of the puzzle pieces, or facts about the animals or link the puzzle pieces to stories in his favourite books or to something he saw or did during the day.

The start is always slow, until he learns the shapes. He would do the same puzzle over and over and over again, until he can complete it without any help in no time. He must have a phenomenal visual memory – he was able to do the alphabet and numbers puzzles after one-two days, without knowing the letters or the numbers. 

Baby had a phase with one of his animals puzzle, when he would take either one piece (for days, the white bunny was the lucky one) or several pieces one by one and hide them, throw them under the sofa. It didn’t matter whether we saw him or not. He would then make a fuss about the disappearance. We played the game. When asked where the animal was, he would point to the place where it was hidden. We would take it out, happy sounds, and everything repeated. 

After Christmas, puzzles helped us pass the time of a two and a half hours flight. A bit heavy to carry, but worth it. We made a friend – a 3 year old girl was attracted by the puzzles and joined the game. 

The means of transport puzzle is currently a big hit. I guess that’s because we sing a song or a nursery rhyme for each of its pieces. Little gosling lost interest in doing the puzzle and instead holds up the pieces one by one and asks us to sing. Daddy is doing the car (“Vitezomanu’ Gica și-a luat mașină mică..”) and the bike (“Coana Mița biciclista a căzut….” – we’re now trying to identify an alternative poem or song to this), mommy does the train (“One way ticket”), the bus (“The wheels on the bus”) and the helicopter (I sing a song in German from a toy helicopter he got as a gift from his aunt in Germany: “Helikopter dass bin ich, kom zeig ein und flieg mit mir, es macht zo viel Spaß mit mir, ta ta ta ta ta ta ta); we do the boat together (“Barca pe valuri plutește ușor…” or the much more recently learnt “Bateau sur l’eau, la riviere, la riviere…” in French), the plane (“Avion cu motor ia-mă și pe mine-n zbor”) and the submarine (The Beatles’ “Yellow submarine”). For the rocket we do a launch sound and for the UFO we invent one. That is real family entertainment!  

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