Button Moon

Harry is very into Button Moon at the moment. I must admit that this is because we have pushed him towards it in a fit of nostalgia (Bagpuss is also on the to watch list).

Unfortunately, being an old programme, there aren't any toys available. But who needs plastic toys when you have cardboard boxes and a pair of scissors?

Of course we only allow him to watch it because it is educational. He has expanded his vocabulary (telescope! spaceship! egg cup!) and improved his counting. Except that he now counts backwards (5, 4, 3, 2, 1, blast off!).

Getting more sleep with a sleep training clock

I am obsessed with sleep. Every morning I count the hours of sleep I have had, and feel pretty good if it's more than six.

Harry has never been a good sleeper. The early mornings (4.30am at one point!) started when he was about 4 months old. We've been woken for months at a time by him rolling on to his tummy and getting stuck, standing up in the cot and not being able to get back down, nightmares, many months of nights with two hours of continuous screaming, two months of waking up at 9.30pm on the dot every single night.  

The early mornings were the worst. We put him to bed earlier, we put him to bed later. We gave him more naps during the day and we reduced his daytime sleep. Some evenings he had a big dinner, some evenings a small dinner. We got up with him at 5am, we left him screaming until 6am. We went in as soon as he woke up and told him to go back to sleep, we ignored him as soon as he woke up and left him until 6am. We even tried going in to rouse him an hour before he normally woke up to see if that settled him back into a deeper sleep. Nothing worked, and fed up of hysterical morning screaming we learned to put up with getting up earlier.

At two and a half we had settled down to one wake up per night, settling quickly with a drink, and a morning start of around 5.20am. He was starting to drop his daytime nap and was getting so grumpy during the day due to lack of sleep that it just wasn't any fun at all for any of us. And with a new baby in the house, we were getting a bit desperate.

And then, one night in the early hours while I was up feeding the baby, Ram found the Gro-Clock Sleep Trainer on special offer and so we thought we'd give it a go. We didn't really expect it to work. 

To our utter astonishment, a little over a month later, we now have a toddler that mostly sleeps through the night without waking - and more importantly 9 times out of 10 is staying in bed until the sun comes up, sometimes even later! 

So if you have this problem with your toddler, no matter how stubborn you think they are, I would absolutely recommend one of the many types of clock that are available. Here are some tips based on our experience:

• Wait until your child is old enough to understand the concept. Harry was two and a half. They need to have the vocabulary and communication skills to understand about the sun, the stars, staying in bed and so on. 
• We gave Harry the clock in its box and told him that it was a present for him, a "special clock". He quickly referred to it as his "morning clock". We let him unpack it and explore it.
• The Gro-Clock has a demo mode, so we set it up during the day and practiced lying down when the stars were out, and getting up with a "Hooray, the sun has come up!
• We started off setting the clock for a time before he usually woke up, in our case about 5.10am. Then after a few days we did a bigger jump to about 5.45am.
• We continued moving the wake up time on the clock forward very gradually, by only about 5 minutes a week. It's still set to 6.15am. We're just not sure how much to push our luck!
• The Gro-Clock comes with a little bedtime story book which reinforces how important it is to "stay in bed until the sun". We read it together. Every night. We can both quote it verbatim. 
• When Harry did wake up before the sun came out in the early days, a few times he got very cross and continuously got out of bed. We returned him to bed with minimal fuss and emphasised that he needed to wait until the sun came up. When it did, we would go in and give him lots of praise for staying in bed (even if he hadn't exactly!) But this only happened a handful of times.
• We talked a lot during the day about what a good boy he was for waiting nicely in bed until the sun had come up. 
• You could think about a reward system, such as a sticker chart, but we found we didn't need one.

Of course, I may come back in a few months time and report that it's all gone pear-shaped. But we are still in shock at how well this seems to have worked! And we are much happier now with his sleeping, even if we do now have less time to get us all ready in the mornings. I would certainly recommend giving it a go. And we can forget for the time being that we have many more sleepless nights ahead until we do it all over again with the littlest one!

Chessington World of Adventures

Ram took Harry for a day out at Chessington yesterday. He had a great time on the rides, but his favourite part was brushing the goats in the Children's Zoo!

10 things to do with toddlers and tin foil

Here are some ideas for ways to entertain your toddler using tin foil!

Rip it, tear it, scrunch it and create sculptures. Make cups and bowls for a tea party.

Drop it flat from high up and watch it float down, then crumple a piece and drop it and see the difference.

Wrap up and unwrap small toys.

Screw pieces up into small balls and post into a bottle or box.

Make a tin foil river in the garden - a really fun activity for a summer day!

Lay a piece over textured objects on a hard surface and rub over with fingers, for example coins, leaves, brick, sand, small beads, spaghetti.

Stick pieces onto paper and paint over them, or dip scrunched up pieces into the paint and use to stamp with.

Pour some olive oil onto a sheet and paint and swirl with fingers.

Lay a sheet out on a soft surface, poke holes with a cocktail stick and hold up to the light or a window to see the patterns.

Lay a piece out on a soft but firm surface such as carpet and stamp patterns with household objects, for example duplo pieces, bottle and jar lids. Run over it with toy cars or tractors to create roads and train tracks.

How to make sensory bottles for babies and toddlers

Even really small babies like to watch you shake sensory bottles, and older babies and toddlers enjoy playing with them too. They are really easy to make, most materials are readily found around the home, and they will last for ages. All you need are some clean plastic bottles and some imagination. Just fill the bottles with interesting things and seal them tightly. 

For my sensory bottles I used lentils, quinoa, dried mung beans, coloured water, water with washing up liquid and coloured water with sequins and glitter. 

I used plastic bottles I had collected from free samples of fabric conditioner, and I sealed them with electrical tape. You could make smaller bottles with hotel sized toiletry bottles or use larger drinks bottles. You could either make a matching set, or use a selection of different sized bottles for variety.

Some other things that you could put into sensory bottles:

Rice, try dying some with food colouring

Sand

Olive oil

Sequins

Tiny toys, such as those from from Christmas crackers or small Lego pieces

Coloured beads

Coloured shredded paper

Tinsel

Ribbon

Pieces of fabric

Confetti, or pieces of coloured paper
Tiny pictures, or letters and numbers cut from magazines
Dried pasta

There are also many resources on-line with further ideas for example more educational bottles which would appeal to older toddlers, like magnet and counting bottles. 

Make sure to seal the lids of the bottles very well with tape or a glue gun, and only allow babies and toddlers to play with them under supervision. Check them periodically to make sure that they are still safe for your child.

Time for Mia

I was feeling a bit bad after posting the other day that I hadn't unpacked any toys yet for Mia. So I hauled down the big box of rattles, plastic teethers, rattles, sensory bottles, balls and books. I lay her on the changing mat and let Harry loose.

It was fascinating to watch Harry interact with her, he loved playing with her. The game consisted mainly of Harry taking out one toy at a time and dumping it on her tummy with accompanying commentary:

  

"Here's a pretty one, Mia" 

"There you go, Mia"

"This one's got water in it!"

"I like this one!"

Although she didn't seem to be paying much attention, and did look a bit bemused, she was obviously entertained, and although not grabbing toys yet she was feeling the different textures in her hands and mouth. It kept them both entertained for quite some time, which is always a bonus, and it helped me to realise that it won't be long before there will be activities which I can do with them both together at the same time.

Why do babies cry?

I frequently find myself with reason to wonder about the reason why babies cry. Obviously, I understand that it is their only way to communicate that their needs are not being met. But sometimes the baby is fed, changed, winded, rested, at the correct temperature, entertained and cuddled, and yet they still cry and cry. 

From an evolutionary perspective it just doesn't make sense to me. Surely a baby crying for no apparent reason than cannot be soothed is only drawing the attention of unwanted predators? 

I found a very interesting article from The New York Times - A Darwinian Look at a Wailing Baby.  

It's a great article and summarises the thoughts of several scientists. It's obvious, but something that particularly stood out for me - the odds of an infant surviving to adulthood go up if it gets a lot of food, protection and care. Therefore natural selection should in fact favour genes for the noisier children because they will get more attention.

So it seems that although a louder baby would be easier for predators to find, a quiet baby would be ignored or passed over in favour of others, and therefore not have its needs met and risk not reaching adulthood. The benefit in alerting parents that one's needs are not being met therefore outweighs the disadvantage of being a potential advertisement to predators. 

Very interesting, and something for me to think about further as I pace up and down the corridors trying to soothe my own little one!

(Please note that in the picture above Mia has just been fed and changed and is being walked about in my arms, she is crying because she is tired, I didn't make her cry just so that I could take a photo to illustrate the post!)