Birthdays galore

All my little 'rats' are one year old now and toddling. The 'rats' are those born in the Chinese lunar year of the rat.






The first birthday party started in September with Renee






Then it was Isaac and the twins Marrisa and Mirabelle in early October











Finally it was Xuan's turn in mid October

Giving fruits to small children

Almost all the babies are 10 months old so time to introduce fruits. I personally do not like to puree the fruits because, firstly I am too lazy to do this and secondly but most importantly, processing fruits will reduce the nutritional contents of the fruits. I also do not like to extract the juice because the children need the fibre to prevent constipation and some of the vital nutrients are in the fibre so by just giving the juice alone your baby will not have all the nutrients of the fruit
Most of the children have a few front teeth so they can bite through the fruits but they do not know how to properly chew food yet therefore it is important to use the right method to feed them.






Fruits like apples are hard therefore the best way is to scrape them. Cut the fruit into big slices.







Using a teaspoon, scrape the fruit until you get a pulp onto the spoon.







Offer it to the child. Continue scraping and feeding it to the baby until the slice is finished. It is best to start with one big slice and as your child gets used to the fruit you can give more.




If the fruit is soft you can give it slice by slice instead of mashing it up. This will teach your baby to enjoy the real texture of the fruit and it is less messy. I like to use the local ‘pisang emas’ because the texture is smoother and one banana is just nice for small children.







Peel the banana and using a teaspoon, slice off a small piece at a time.








Feed your child one slice at a time.








If you give kiwi fruits, cut it into halves








Use the ‘slicing’ method








Give one slice at a time until it is all gone.








Watermelon should be cut into very small cubes








Use a fork to offer the cut fruits to the child








Jeun Yip showing us that the fruit is good. All children cannot use their thumb to show the “this is good” sign so they use their fore finger.

Growth and development progress

Beginning this month I will be posting a monthly report on the growth and development progress of 4 new babies in my centre. The objective of these reports are to hopefully show you that each baby will grow and develop at his own pace even though they are given similar stimulation and care. This is a photo of the 4 'mouseketeers'. They are 3 boys and 1 girl. The reason why I added a girl is because it is generally believed that girls develop faster than boys so we shall see if this is true.


















Starting from the right, the babies are:

Wei Jun - born end of July, is 4 months and 1 week old

Jeun Yip – born middle of August is 3 months and 2 weeks old

Gavin – born end of August is 3 months and 1 week old

Renee – born middle of September is 2 months and 2 weeks old


The videos below are to see how each baby tries controlling their heads.


Wei Jun



Jeun Yip



Gavin





Hi, I am Renee and Aunty Cecilia says it is boring watching all the boys lifting their heads so I will show what I can do.





See? I can hold my head quite well without support.