My Life in Black and White

I've always been a color person - blue especially. So when we discovered we were expecting, I wanted to paint the nursery blue. Unfortunately, I didn't feel up to painting during the first part of my pregnancy. By the time I felt better, Michael had convinced me just to leave the room white (it had just been painted before we moved in). I was unconvinced at first, but eventually the idea grew on me.

Many studies have shown that newborns see black and white images better than color images for the first few months of life. Black and White provides a sharp contrast which allows the baby to better develop his visual acuity and convergence (getting the eyes to work together to focus on a given object).

So we got dark furniture and black curtains for the nursery. I pulled out the black and white rug we got in London. I did some black and white art projects for the walls. We hung up a mobile with black and white images for him to look at. I made black and white checkerboards for the corner and pulled out the black and white infant stimulation cards to give Isaac something to see when he was on the floor. Basically I just ran with the black and white theme!

Then other day I looked around and realized that the black and white had slowly taken over the whole loft! Almost everything we do is in black and white! No wonder Isaac wants to look around so much - there are so many things that are easy for him to see!

Because I thought it was funny how much the black and white theme has taken over my life, I took some pictures to illustrate just how much black and white I see every day! I left out the pictures of the nursery because I included them in the Isaac at 6 weeks post, so you can go check them out if you missed them.

Isaac's favorite black and white object is, by far, the piano! He loves it! He can be fussy, even almost asleep, but when he sees or hears the piano he's instantly awake and ready to play! I think that it's the best infant stimulation activity there is. It's great for auditory, tactile, and visual stimulation, plus he gets to sit in my lap and be cuddled while we play!

I think that the black and white theme has been as good for me as it is for Isaac. It's clean and simple and seems uncluttered, which is good because it inspires me to make the rest of my life simple and uncluttered as well. All in all black and white has been a good thing, but I'm also excited that he's seeing well because next week....Color!