Babys First Year

Today let’s focus on just having fun and forgetting all the challenges of parenting. Rather than worrying about growth and development charts, why not have some fun? This is your chance! Getting out with your baby helps you both – it gets you out of the house, and provides baby with invaluable social interaction and brain stimulation. Here are some ideas on what to do with your baby which are both entertaining and educational.

Water Play

Babies love water. Depending on the season, try some of these water activities.

* Fill a wading pool with a few inches of water. Get into the water with your baby and enjoy pouring water through funnels, from cup to cup, and through tubes. You can get creative with this activity! Balls, plastic containers, bottles, and other items make great toys for the mini pool. You can do this in the bathtub with your baby, too.

* Lay down a plastic painting tarp in your house and set out containers of water for your baby to touch and explore. Spoons, bowls, pots, cups, funnels, pans, and so forth can all be set out for fun.

* Natural water sources, if you have access to them, can be fascinating for babies. Creeks, rivers, waterfalls, streams, and so forth can be shown to your baby. Hopefully, you can get close enough to wade or hold your baby while you wade, or let baby feel the water flowing. Tossing in some rocks is fun, too.

Visit a “Big Box” Store

Take your baby to a home improvement store where you can both explore exciting things like ceiling fans, lights, and fountains in the garden center area. Riding mowers, refrigerators, washers and dryers, etc. all make for interesting fun for your baby. Most such stores have hands-on areas where you can experience appliances, windows and doors, curtains, carpets, and an assortment of textures and colors.

Nature “Hike”

Your baby will almost certainly enjoy a trip to a local park, forest, or other natural area. This could just be your back yard. Talk about the birds’ calls and point out the feeling of the breeze or the sunshine. Let your baby hold pine cones, nuts (make sure nothing goes in the mouth), twigs, rocks, and so forth. Nature provides a lot of textures, sights, smells and sounds.

Scarf Dancing

You can combine exercise with fun and brain simulation by putting on some music and dancing with your baby. If he is not old enough to sit up, lay him on the floor on a blanket and dance around and over and around him. Let him feel the scarf, too.

If your baby is older, he (or she) can sit up and “dance” with scarves of his own, or play peek-a-boo with the pretty cloth while you dance. You can also hold your baby and dance with him. Choose light, brightly-colored scarves with interesting textures.

I have no idea why the media chooses to show parenthood as easy and blissful. Yes, it has it’s moments and yes, it’s incredibly wonderful – no arguement there. 

But so many new moms seem caught off guard by how tough it is.  They seem to wonder what’s wrong with them because their baby doesn’t come out of the womb and sleep through the night.  Guess what.  Most babies don’t sleep through the night for a few months – maybe even a year – and it’s no one’s fault.  Just as each person is different; each baby is also different.

So the next time someone asks you if your baby is doing this or that yet.  Feel free to tell them “no, not yet, but I’m sure he/she will on his/her own time” and change the subject.  Don’t let it get you down.  Most of the time people are only asking to make conversation anyway

Chicken Noodle Soup
Serves 2

Ingredients:
6 cups of chicken or vegetable stock
2 chicken breasts, boneless and skinless
2 garlic cloves, crushed
2 tsp fresh ginger, grated
4 oz rice noodles
6 mushrooms, thinly sliced
4 tbsp frozen peas
4 green onions, finely sliced
4 tbsp soy sauce
Fresh basil leaves, torn

Instructions:
Add the chicken stock into a saucepan, together with the chicken, garlic and ginger. Bring stock to a boil, then quickly reduce temperature and simmer for about 20 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through and no longer pink inside. Remove the chicken from the stock and cut into chunks. Then return the chicken pieces to the saucepan and add the peas, mushrooms, green onions and noodles. Stir in the soy sauce and simmer until the noodles are soft.

Sprinkle with basil leaves and enjoy immediately.