SHORTLY after learning "ma-ma" and "da-da," Ginger and Ruby Rosenheck said "bye-bye" to their high chairs.
"They are the lamest, ugliest, most restraining things in the world and when you have twins, high chairs just take over the room," says their mother Cindy Capobianco. "So at 14 months, we got them their own table and chairs."
"It took a few days to teach them to sit -- and eat -- there," says her husband Rob Rosenheck, who dines nearby with his wife in Ikea metal chairs at an 18th century colonial table. "But now they do and it's so damned cute."
Though the family lives in a two-bedroom rental home that was once a former 1920s hunting lodge in Laurel Canyon, space wasn't really the problem. It was a quality-of-life issue: As children of the 1960s and first-time parents with firmly established tastes -- he is a photographer and filmmaker, she owns a marketing firm that caters to the fashion industry -- neither wanted to dial down their colorfully offbeat approach to decor, a blend of bohemian chic and thrift shop cheek. Nor did they want their living room turned into a minefield of building blocks and Barbies.
They are not alone. A growing number of new moms and dads are overwhelmed by the amount of toddler furnishings on the market but underwhelmed by their appearance and quality. They have seen other parents succumb to the culture of fear that has made baby-proofing a booming business. And they have watched friends and relatives surrender their design sensibilities -- along with the better part of their homes -- to an avalanche of kids' stuff.
"Every house that has kids, there are toys and white plastic furniture everywhere. You can tell the kids rule the house," says designer Jorge Dalinger, the father of a 2-year-old. "You don't have to sacrifice the look of the house for the baby."
Dalinger -- who has turned a four-story architectural box into an ornately detailed Spanish showplace -- and the Rosenhecks refuse to let their stylish homes become peewee playhouses. They believe that listening to their inner interior decorators, taking the necessary safety precautions and setting proper boundaries for their kids make for prettier, happier nests.
This seems a welcome antidote to the "child-centric" home, as Chicago clinical psychologist David deBoer calls it. "Parents who are trying to reclaim their adult space in the house and set appropriate boundaries help foster realistic expectations versus a sense of entitlement. They are not giving their children a grandiose sense of omnipotence that will be shattered in the real world."
