Baby Routine Advice

Cynthia - posted on 05/30/2009

If he is not sitting up yet...lay him on a blanket on the floor with a few chewy, different textured toys (hard, soft, plush, noisy, krinkly, etc) within reach for him to grab and chew on. Change up the toys on a daily basis so keep as few in reserve that he doesn't play with so you can change it up and keep it interesting. the best place to get these baby toys is in a consignment shop, dollar store, thrift store, or some other second hand store where you can pick up a bunch for super cheap and wash them and voila!



other toys to try: a flashlight you plug into the wall so it has the rechargable batteries..these are lots of fun in a slightly less bright room.



fill small sealable plastic bags with water and glitter or food colouring and put them in a high chair with the bag on the tray and let them poke and grab at the bag. once they have teeth discontinue the bag.



homemade rattles in plastic jars with plastic screw tight lids: add rice or peas or beans (dry of course) and let them shake the dickens out of it.



Spoons, or ladels from your cooking arsenal with plastic or steel bowls are a loud hoot to play with, and don't forget the reading! Go to the library and find board books they can chew on without any stress. babies love to hear your voice read a story. And no matter how bad a reader you think you are you will always make your baby smile when you read to them. if it is a book with words in it talk to them about the words. example being a picture book with a picture of a girl.... touch the picture of the girl and say look this is a little girl. she is smiling. look how happy she is. or she has long brown hair. or whatever. they just want to hear you talk to them about what they are seeing.



My sister reads to her little one when she gets sleepy. It is starting to work like a charm to send her off to sleep everytime, but this is something that has to be done repeatedly to make it work.



For our little guy we feed him dinner around 5:15 or so. He will play for half an hour and then he gets a bath every second day about 6:30pm. then he plays for about a half an hour and he gets squawky for lack of a better description and we breastfeed and off to sleep he goes usually between 7 and 7:30pm.



Schedules really depend on the age of your child, so it will change up when you thought you finally figured it out. Wake times will progressively get longer and naptimes will progressively get shorter.



just change up the hands on part of the activities and he will be more interested in the world around him and less bored. ps: tv is not recommended for children under three years of age as it it believed to be linked to developemnt of ADD and ADHD. Having said that we allowed our first son to start watching Thomas the Tank DVD's at age 18 months. He could watch one episode once a day whe he was 18 months. Each DVD has at least 10 or more on them. Now at age three we let him watch an entire dvd about 45 minutes once a week or less. we have so many other fun things we can do there is hardly any time for tv. Not bashing you AT ALL by any means. There are some pretty good kids channels out there, it is simply our choice.i'd rather go ant hunting or splash in some huge puddles or go for a walk and end up seeing some funky cloud shapes or see an excavator digging on some construction site. remember it is all new to them and just same old boring to us. challenge yourself to look at everything around you as if you've never seen it before and then put yourself in their shoes and ask yourself (as they would be doing) what is that? what does it do? Hey it does that! Neat! I think that is why we have kids, to remember life all over again and remember it's supposed to be fun! ok I digress...hope this helps. take care.

Emma - posted on 05/30/2009

thats pretty much all i did with my little one.. is ur son sitting up by himself?? i have a 9month old and shes pretty good at entertaining herself in her playpen!! my daughter used to love being in a swing ( an electronic one which held her in ) and shed sit in that and watch me making stupid faces or just doing the housewok.. she also had a walker (minus the wheels) which was a music one so she could sit and press buttons and just make noise... at 4 months there isnt much more that can be done.. keep up with the tummy time! my daughter hated it but then as soon as she could roll she loved it!! keep it up ur doing really well!! take care