High Maintenance Mom

I can't remember a time when I didn't love stickers. As a child, I collected them in albums and traded with friends. As a new mom, I longed for the days when my kids would play with stickers. And then, a little before 18 months of age, my first started to enjoy putting stickers everywhere. I learned quickly that big stickers with an easy-to-peal shape, like a circle, worked best for younger kids.

I started a notebook for B around 18 months. The idea was to use it on trips and record his activities. I had a cute picture of him in a play plane from the Philadelphia airport and I taped it to the front of a basic spiral notebook with contact paper. It said something like, "B goes on an airplane". We'd color in it or put our stickers in it on trips. Having a notebook for drawings and stickers made me feel better about using so many stickers -- and since we used whatever page he wanted to use, dating the pages helped me feel more organized...

At first B put stickers on top of each other as if they needed to be near their friends. He would say things like, "and here's another frog friend". I hadn't thought that the beautiful stickers I bought for him would be covered with other stickers and I tried not to interfere. In his next sticker phase he would place the stickers all over a sheet of paper and then color over them with markers, again obscuring some of my favorite stickers. Now he makes up stories with the stickers and I try to write them down on the paper he's using as quickly as I can. The stories are fun and we both enjoy looking at them later.

Below are some of the stickers I like best from Oriental Trading Company. I was very excited to find these stickers and keep lots of them in the house for sticker projects. As I mentioned earlier, they are great on the plane.

The Zoo Animal Roll Stickers (100 for $1.95) are great for younger kids. They are the first stickers my son could peel on his own and they come in lots of different designs. We like the farm animal roll stickers, dinosaur roll stickers, and tropical fish roll stickers.

The Make-A-Farm stickers are an easy favorite because they include so many animals. We also like the Make-a-fish aquarium stickers and the make-a-birthday cake stickers. I include them with birthday presents. There is a pink themed sheet with a ballerina and a blue themed sheet with a car. It's fun to decorate the cake.

The Make-a-race car and Make-your-own animal stickers
are for older (maybe 3+) children who like to use lots of little stickers to build something.

There is also a new set of Do-it-yourself stickers for older children that includes a space theme, garden scene, and aquarium scene.

And finally, there are new licensed stickers such as Nemo, Sesame Street, the Incredibles, etc., which are big enough for little hands and very commercial.