Look Who's Talking Now!!!

We went for Derek’s 18 month check up on November 26.  He remains in the 5^th percentile for height and weight.  However the doctor was very impressed with his vocabulary!  On the developmental check sheet it asks, “Can your child say 8 words other than Mama and Dada?”  I giggled when I saw that because my child can say at least 40 words other than Mama and Dada.  At this point he is not using Mama and Dada anymore either, it is Mommy and Daddy in our house.  Two of the best words ever uttered by an 18 month old!

So after refreshing my memory of what the expected vocabulary of an 18 month old is, I became very proud of my child’s accomplishments.  The average child his age says 5-20 words.  I do know that I was speaking complete sentences by the time I was 2 years old so this could be partly genetic.  But I also believe it has to do with the things we do with him at home.

1. We read 10-15 books to him every night.  He brings us book after book and we just keep reading them.  We point out pictures in the books and tell him what they are.  We ask him questions like “point to the bird” and he does. 
2. We limit T.V.  He “watches” maybe 30 minutes in the morning before going to daycare.  On the weekend it might be a little longer.  Generally he isn’t even interested in it anyway.  He only pays attention when there is a song.  At night, we don’t turn the T.V. on until after he goes to bed.  Many times we listen to music instead.  I made a play list on my ipod of kids songs for him.
3. Occasionally we watch Letter Factory by Leapfrog during dinner. It teachers the names of letters and the letter sounds.  At this point, he knows the sounds for A, B, C, D, F, H, P, and W.   
4. We have recently started asking him to say “please” and “thank you”.  Today he started doing it without prompting!  It was so exciting when he said “pees” for a piece of chicken and “tank u” when I handed it to him.  It melted my heart!
5. We never correct him when he says words incorrectly (which is the majority of the time).  We also never use his version of the word when we say it so that he will hear it correctly and eventually correct it himself.  For example, he says “nana” for banana.  We always say “do you want a banana?”  or “here’s a banana.”  Modeling correct vocabulary is important.  We never said “baba” for bottle.
6. In addition to his vocabulary and letter sounds, he also knows several animal noises and all of his body parts.  These are all things we practice with him at home.

We do all of the above things because they are a priority for us.  Sitting him in front of the T.V. because we have things to do is not something we are into.  This is probably why we have so many unfinished projects going on.  We don’t do things for “us” until after he goes to bed.  It’s all about priorities.

It is important to remember that all children develop at different rates.  The activities you do at home can help foster this development, but they still won’t do it until they are ready.

http://www.childdevelopmentinfo.com/development/language_development.shtml

http://www.babycenter.com/0_toddler-milestone-talking_11738.bc

Feeding Time part 2

Being a full-time working mother, with a child who goes to bed early (by 7:30 P.M.), I try to maximize my time with my son without jeopardizing his nutrition.  We have never been ones to eat at fast food restaurants, but have done our share of eating out when we just didn’t feel like cooking.  With a child, we knew this was not practical.  It was too expensive, and his behavior isn’t always predictable.

Eating Out

On the RARE occasion we do eat out, we go to dinner at 5 P.M.  This way there are fewer people in the restaurant and we have a better chance of him being in a good mood.  I usually bring snacks and sometimes other food that he might like in case he isn’t “in the mood” for what is on the menu, since at 18 months old, he has his own opinions and meal times are much more challenging than when he was 8 months old.  Although, if pasta is an option, there is a good chance he will be happy.  There are only a few restaurants that we choose from as well.  Places like Red Robin and Panera are good choices for him because they are usually loud (which drowns out his noise) and have things on the menu that he will eat.  Many times I ask for his food to be brought out first so that he can begin eating.  He also takes longer to eat than we do so this allows him more time to eat his food.  We have been known to ask for our food to be boxed up so that we could leave because he was not in a good mood.  Just another thing we now have to realize might happen with a child.

There are also ways that we save money when we eat out.  We look for coupons so that we aren’t paying for our entire meal.  Some restaurants offer Kids Eat Free nights.  They may be more crowded, but everyone there has a kid so we know ours won’t be the only one being loud.  Everyone there is in the same position as us so we all understand.  Finally, we MAYBE eat out once a month, but usually not that often.  I can’t remember the last time we went out to dinner???

While it is a rarity for us to eat out in a restaurant, we do feel it is important to do this on occasion so that Derek will learn how to behave in public.  If he were to never go out to eat until an age that we think he might behave, we still might not get the result that we want because he had never practiced it before. 

Eating In

I am a Costco shopper.  I go once every couple of months and stock up on meat.  I am also a planner.  I plan out my dinners a week in advance so that I know what I need to get at the store and so when I get home from work I don’t have to figure out what to have for dinner.  Well, in October, I decided to kick it up a notch.  After my Costco shopping trip, I planned out my meals FOR A MONTH!!!  Then, I prepared a bunch of them ahead of time!  I made spinach stuffed shells, meatloaf, taco meat, hamburgers in gravy (a family favorite), and I marinated chicken before freezing.  I did 4 different flavors: Bar-B-Que, honey mustard, Italian, and balsamic vinegar.  Then I froze the chicken in their marinades.  I left some of the meat as is in case I wanted to make something different.  I already had pork chops and tenderloins in the freezer and we always have frozen pizza on hand and frozen veggies.

When I planned out my meals, I took into consideration all of the things that were prepared ahead of time and other items that I had on hand.  I also made sure to schedule in the nights that we had outings already planned and nights that it was just Mommy and Derek or Daddy and Derek.  The month just ended yesterday and it was a success!  I was less stressed when I got home from work because most of the meals were already prepared.  All I had to do was take it out of the freezer and put it in the oven for about an hour and it was done.  This gave me more time to spend with Derek instead of spending all of my time preparing dinner and not getting to play with him and then having to put him to bed almost immediately after we ate.  I have already begun my next month of planning which will take me up until Christmas.

What made me want to do all of this?  My priorities have changed since I had a child.  HE is my priority.  Only having three hours at home with him on weeknights is not a lot.  It is important to me to spend that time WITH him.  Having dinner planned and prepared ahead of time helps tremendously.

Feeding Time part 1

Infant Feeding (birth through a year old)

Baby Food

It was important to me that my son had healthy foods from day 1.  Since I was unable to breastfeed as long as I wanted, I knew the next best thing I could do was to give him healthy foods.  When he was 4 months old he began eating rice cereal.  Slowly we introduced fruits and vegetables.  All of his food was homemade.  He was not a “Gerber baby”.  Several people have said, “It’s too much work.  I work and don’t have time.”  It really doesn’t take that much time and I work full-time as well and found the time. 

To that I say it’s all about prioritizing.

I looked through several different books with recipes to help me understand what was involved with making my own baby food.  The book I eventually purchased was entitled Blender Baby Food by Nicole Young.  It had all of the information I needed to begin this process and several recipes to get me started.

http://www.healthcastle.com/baby_foods_commercial.shtml

After I began my baby food making adventure, I found ways to make that even easier.  Here’s how:

• Use ice cube trays and plastic wrap to freeze in small portions. (each ice cube is about 1 oz of food)
• Once it is frozen, store it in Ziploc freezer bags labeled with the contents and date.
• Use frozen fruits and veggies whenever you can.  I still purchased organic fruits and veggies.  I cooked up the veggies and then pureed them with some water.  I thawed out the fruits and pureed them as is.
• Applesauce: I fed him (and still do) natural applesauce, no added sugars, just apples and water.
• The Magic Bullet!!!  Worked much easier than the blender.
• I spent Sunday’s preparing several different kinds of food and freezing them.  This way he was set for the week.
• I still sent home made food to daycare!  I just labeled the bags and my daycare provider let me know when she was running low on certain foods and I replenished.
• Once he got to the next stage when foods were chunkier, I pureed whatever we were eating for dinner and fed it to him.

Finger Food and Sippy Cups

Around 6 months old we started giving him finger foods, Gerber Puffs and Cheerios.  He also started using a sippy cup.  It was important to me that he did not use a bottle once he was a year old so starting him with water (no juice) at 6 months old in a sippy cup was a good way to help with that.  He only had water in a sippy cup and formula in a bottle.  Sometimes he got formula in a sippy cup because he was starting to not drink it anymore.  This way he would associate being a big boy with the sippy cup.  We did not (and still do not) give him juice.  His choices are milk or water.

http://pediatrics.about.com/cs/nutrition/a/fruit_juice.htm

Once he turned about 8 months old, we introduced meat.  Some of it was chunky pureed and fed by spoon. He was not a big meat eater (and still really isn’t but he does much better now).  We started giving him pieces of ground meat (turkey, chicken, beef).  It was easier for him to chew (with his gums).  We also began giving him chunks of tofu for extra protein.  At this time, he started eating more foods off of our plates including vegetables, pasta, and bread.  He was quickly off of the pureed baby food.  (He was probably on pureed food for about 3 ½ months.)  This made meal times easier because we were all eating the same foods and he was feeding himself (with his hands of course).  It was definitely messy, but that’s okay.  How else would he learn?

Self-Feeding With Utensils (and Eating At the Table)

He had been grabbing for the utensils for a while and we did some shared feeding (2 spoons: one for him, one for us).  At around 10 months old we started letting him try to feed himself the majority of the meal.  At this time we also gave him a plate or bowl and had him sitting up at the table with a placemat instead of in the infant highchair with a tray.  Naturally, this was a messy adventure, but that was okay with us!  We just cleaned it up when he was finished.  It wasn’t too long before he was able to feed himself even better with the spoon (and now the fork as well).  He eventually stopped dumping the food off of the plate or out of the bowl.  Now he places the food he doesn’t like on the placemat!