Baby Speech Development

One thing that I've come to realize as a father of an active child is to always expect the unexpected. For instance, I've always assumed that children soak up their surroundings and learn extremely quickly. What I didn't expect is that everytime my 10 month old greets people now that she's learned from us to wave and say "hi".

I've read about it in development books and on forums but actually witnessing my little girl become such a socialite is blowing me a way. Since then me and the wife are constantly working with her on her speech development and to help her progress to a gabby baby.

If your little one is quiet or you'd like to help speed along your baby's speech development here are some tips that I would give:

- Talk to your baby all the time. Talk in adult words as well. Even if it is simply walking down the hall to her room for a diaper change ask her how her day has been. You may feel a little akward but it goes miles for helping your baby develop its speech pattern.
- Encourage your babies speech. If your baby is learning the word "Dada" then make a game of it. Hide behind something and say "Where's dada" and poke your head out. Also, if your baby is asking for her bah ask her if she wants her bottle. Try and discourage you and family members from using infant words for real objects. Don't ask if she wants her "bah" unless you want her using that for the next year.
- Expose your baby to new words and gestures. If she points to something tell her what it is. I probably spend 30 minutes collectively throughout the day showing my baby pictures of mommy, daddy, the doggy, the baby, etc. We walk down the hall where the pictures are hung and she'll point to a picture and I'll say "Who is that pretty baby?".
- Expand your babies vocabulary. Lasty. Read, read, read, and read some more to your baby. Even if it is the same story back to back. It may bore you to tears but you are building new neural pathways for your baby with each pass through of the book. Besides, your baby generally will tell you when she's bored with that book and wants a new one.

Hopefully this helps to get you started or reinforces what you've already known. Your baby is a mirror image of what you do. If you are constantly quiet and watching TV or on the computer then your baby will be a recluse and quiet as well.

Homemade Baby Food

For those of us who would like to be our own little gerber baby food I thought I would share my experiences with making baby food. It was an idea that my wife and I talked about after we found a baby food grinder at our local babies r us. It is a manual grinder that you put steamed or soft food into and then grind it with a hand crank and serve to your baby. We bought this little contraption and used it that night. Needless to say I didn't think that making homemade baby food would be as painless as it was! Our first food we tried to grind was steamed green beans. Seeing as green beans was a healthy baby food that you found in the jars to being with we thought this would be a good starting point. Some tips we learned with our first experience. Anything that gets soft after steaming is easiest. This would include carrots, squash, potatoes, beans, celery, etc.

I've looked around for baby food recipes but I'd honestly have to say that the best is pure veggies with no extras. Some recipes I've found have you add in vitamins, etc but if your still feeding by bottle (like we are) and introducing solids then your baby should be getting its vitamins from you/the bottle.

Another thing we've tried recently is when we're making ourselves dinner we keep a piece of bland meat to the side and grind this up for another good homemade baby food item. The meat that works best for us is chicken. Make sure it is thoroughly cooked and grind this up and then grind up some veggies for a good healthy meal.

So if you've been sitting on the fence about whether you should make homemade baby food or if you're looking for an easy alternative I'd highly recommend you try it for yourself!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hopefully everyone had a great thanksgiving and was loaded down with turkey and trimmings. This was a very eventful thanksgiving for us. Despite this being the first year for us to house the family dinner (30+ people) our daughter had a fun time with a case of the runs. Poor thing was miserable but was such a trooper through the whole thing. She started to get it Tuesday and it lasted through today (hopefully). The roughest part for us was that we just recently upgraded her from size 2 diapers to size 3. So, even though she fits the size 3 diapers she was leaking quite a bit through them. Many diapers, change of clothes, and laundry loads later she recovered.

The most interesting thing about her having this bad case of the bowels was that her attitude didn't change drastically. She would have some crabby moments but for the most part she was still a playful and hungry infant. Most of our discoveries of her ruined clothes was while she was playing amungst her toys. Which this meant that toys needed to be disinfected too.

All in all it made for a fun week of running smelly clothes to the laundry but I did happen to learn a few things and I'll share them.

First, always keep a bottle of shout or something to treat the stains near the changing table. This alone saved all of her clothes from being ruined for good.

Don't sweat having to do loads and loads of laundry. As much as it was a bummer to do a miniature load like that it also saved her outfits from stains and smells.

Diaper genie, Diaper genie. This thing is a miracle. It saved the house from smelling like a restroom stall. If you don't have one of these get one! They're a life saver!

Hopefully she is through this and we will go back to our old routine of less diapers and less frequent laundry runs.

See you all next time!

How much should a 9 month old baby sleep?

Now that my little one is 9 months old I did some research to see if she was in the norm for her age and her sleep patterns.

Typically we put her to bed at around nine o'clock everynight and she typically will sleep till 9 the next morning if we don't wake her. Since me and my wife work through the week we wake her up around seven in the morning. So, a typical evening sleep routine is 10 hours.

Her naps are a little different and depends alot on her mood, appetite, and surroundings. In an ideal setting she'll have two to three naps a day averaging about an hour to an hour and a half a piece. There are some days that she sleeps longer and others where she gets in little power naps.

With knowing her pattern I did some research and found that the typical 9-12 month old should be sleeping anywhere between 10-14 hours at night. Also, they should be having at least 2 naps a day averaging an hour or more. The biggest hurdle that most parents have (especially those who breast feed) is night time feedings. There are some techniques that one can use to help wean your little one off of the bottle or breast at night. I'll cover these in a future article.

Also, from personal experience you have to balance keeping a calm atmosphere that is conducive to your baby sleeping and not putting too large a damper on your daily activities. When she was a newborn we always walked on egg shells around the house. It made for some very painful naps when the slightest noise happened. At the guidance of my wife we made the commitment to slowly re-conform to our older day time habits while getting her to sleep. At first we had to do the 'no-no' things like letting her sleep on us or using a bottle to put her to sleep. As we weaned her off these things she's grown into a pretty heavy sleeper. A perfect case in point happened in september. We took her to the county fair and she slept through the whole demolition derby! So don't let anyone tell you that your baby has to sleep in perfect silence!

I hope you found this helpful. If you wish for me to elaborate on anything by all means let me know!

Little Miss Independant

Good afternoon on this fine november day! I thought I'd do a small blip on something I've learned as a father of a little girl. As she has grown I've noticed that she tends to change moods ALOT! (shes a female right? *GRIN*) What really made me realize how she can be was this morning. Typically she likes to be on her own. Playing on the floor doing her own thing. Then other times you can't set her down. Today she was all that rolled into one. As a beginning father I used to find this so frustrating but as time has gone on I've learned a way to deal with it.

You have to understand as a father or even a parent that you have to expect that you will get little time to do the things you want to do. It sucks but accept it. Once I moved on from the fact that I couldn't play on the computer or do the fun things I like to do it became so less frustrating. Its a small piece of advice but believe me you'll get alot of mileage out of this.

Well she's waking from her nap so I must head out for now. Till next time...

LeapFrog Learn & Groove Alphabet Drum Review

Here is another priceless toy for my little one. We actually got this as a hand-me-down from my wife's sister. My niece is about a year and a half older than our little one so it works out tremendously with toys and clothes. When she first gave this toy to us she was only a few months old so it sat around not getting much attention for awhile. Once she was looking at things and noticing the different colors we introduced this and we would tap it so she could see the colors.

Now that she is older and more active she pounds on everything (coffee tables, dogs, daddy's head). So this is a huge blessing because it gives her an outlet for the physical beatings *grin*. Also, me and the wife are HUGE leapfrog fans. I almost would recommend about all their toys but that is another post. The sensitivity is really good. It is pretty stable and doesn't roll around too much. The only drawback for us has been that it can be loud at times. However we usually break it out when we are doing baby-family playtime. I recommend the Learn & Groove for all active babies.

The great thing about this toy is that you can change it to music, alphabet, & dance along. The toy only takes about 3 AA batteries and they do last awhile. This definately is a go & get for your little one. My niece played with this up until she gave it to us as a gift so this has some lasting toy appeal.

Baby Games For 6-9 Months

Now that my little one is 8 months old we've started to develop other games to play with her. We have expanded on the older games that she played when she was younger (such as eye-spy) and we've introduced a few new ones that I'll cover.

1. Baby's drawer. Give your baby a low drawer in the kitchen, her room, or whatever room you wish. Fill this drawer with toys and fun things for baby. We have a drawer in the kitchen that is full of toys and plastic bowls and spoons. She loves to take things out of this drawer and play with them while we're cooking or just playing. I also encourage her to put things back in the drawer when we're done and once everything is put away we say "All done!".

2. Baby Talk. If you haven't already communicate more with your baby. Talk to them, read to them, repeat what they're saying. A good thing to do to help your baby learn associations is to adapt their speaking to new words. if your baby is 'da' alot associate it with 'do' and 'di'. This way it isn't a large leap to start developing new words and vowels.

3. Where'd it go? A game we play alot is hiding an object under a blanket or towel and having her find it. I always start by showing her the toy. Once she's played with it or looked at it I show her that I put it under the towel. Once she pulls it out I excitedly praise her and we rinse and repeat. She loves this game and it really only took a couple tries before she really became a pro at it.

4. Name the face. Start pointing to objects on your face and naming it for her. Point to your nose and say "that's daddy's nose". Then you can move on to pointing to her nose and saying "Thats baby's nose". As your baby starts to grasp this, start forming it as a question "Where is baby's nose? There it is!". This will build on her communication skills and be educational at the same time.

5. Help me stand. By now I'm sure your baby is pulling up on everything. We are strongly encouraging her to explore and try to walk. As much as I hate seeing her grow up I want her to be curious about the world around her and able to explore it. We stand her up on the coffee table and move objects around the table and praise her when she moves to it. She's gotten this down pat and now we have a hard time keeping up with her.

As always look for new and exciting ways to play with your baby. They're sponges at this stage and we try and throw everything that we can at her to help her develop. Never be afraid to try something different to keep your infant entertained.

Stick around for our next article!