She’s been keen on numbers for awhile now.  She loves to point out “fenen” when she sees one… that’s ’7′ for the toddlerese-challenged.  The fun thing she did today was out of nowhere, in the middle of a parking lot, she shouted out “Fee!  Too!  Won!”

Whoa… counting backwards.  Even Flipper didn’t do that until he was closer to three… but then he counted down from five and folding down his fingers one at a time to boot.  Still, sibling rivalries aside, it was cool to see.

Of course, this is a 27-month-old who still says “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 6, 7, 5, 7, 9″ sometimes.

She also loves drawing.  And what she loves drawing best, is anything at all on her brother’s dry-erase board, ostensibly part of his math curriculum.  It’s great, she can draw all she likes, erase it, and start over, and I don’t have to deal with mountains of scribbled paper.

Her drawings are starting to become representational… at least to her.  To us, it’s still circles, zigzags, lines and dots, but to her it’s boats, cats, letters, and (most frequently) whales.

Today I tried drawing a ‘track’ for her to trace.  Two wavy lines about an inch or so apart.  I held her hand to give her the idea to get started, showing that she should follow down the middle of the track.  She quickly understood and finished on her own.  We did a few more at other times during the day as well.  She wobbles off the track occasionally, but for the most part stays in the middle and is definitely following the general shape.

She’s also singing the alphabet now.  This is, of course, totally unrelated to literacy and understanding of letters and phonics, and we had not been teaching it to her.  But she heard it, and it stuck.  Most often, we hear “ay bee see dee eee HEF JAAAAYEEE”… or we hear “koo ar ess, tee yu vee, dubbayu ess, tee yu vee… ”

And we’re also getting frequent renditions of “tinkow tinkow itta taaa” which is just too adorable to be believed.

We were out shopping today and I thought I should get her some new pants.  Many of our favourite pants are now too short on her, and most of the next size up we have in hand-me-downs are still like, size 5.  She’s a little shopping DIVA already, I swear.  Everything she saw was like “Oh!  Cooooooooool!” and “pitty pitty shooooos!!” and trying on sunglasses.   Where’s the tomboy we ordered?

Once I’d found the perfect pants she saw something way up high.  “Beena!  Beena!”  That’s her attempt at “ballerina”.  This girl is a dancer, and we can’t wait until next fall when she can start dance classes.   Anyway, sure enough, there was a cute little t-shirt with a silhouette of a ballerina on it.  She doesn’t need more shirts, but it was very cute, and only $6.  There were a few different designs, and the one she ended up choosing is a lovely image of ballet shoes.  Her two favourite things… dancing, and shoes.

The pants are nifty chocolate brown cargo pants.  Very, very cute.  Of course, I’m going to have to take in the crotch by a good 2″.  Stupid pants manufacturers and their “diaper fit” for toddler clothes.  Did you know it’s next to impossible to find pants “cut for undies” in anything less than a size 4?  While I understand that clothing manufacturers aren’t really familiar with the diaper-free movement and don’t get many requests for cut-for-undies pants for 18-month-olds… or 6-month-olds…  there are still plenty of potty-trained 2-year-olds out there.  And the average age for potty-training is age 3.  So I would at least expect that size 3 would be easy to find.

Alas, it is not to be.  You’ve got to make them yourself, buy them from someone who makes them herself, or alter them yourself.

Finally, while driving around today for my many errands, I noticed that she was being very quiet in the back seat.  She had her toy monkey with her and seemed to be cradling him close, and I wondered if she was falling asleep.  When we arrived, and I was opening her door to let her out, she pulled the monkey away from herself and said “all done nurse!”

All together now:  awwwwwwwwwwwwww.

Be sure to share it with all your friends who are contemplating formula feeding because they think breastfeeding would be too much of a ‘hassle’…

Breastfeeding is not obscene!

I just read about today being a planned action day against Facebook regarding their continuing policy of removing breastfeeding pictures despite many complaints.  Now I admit that I love Facebook… I have reconnected with so many old friends that I had not been able to find in years.  It is a wonderful way to keep in touch with my far-flung community of old buddies.

So I’m not about to quit over this… but you can bet your booby that I’m going to join the protest!

Read the details over at Mama-Is, then go join the action!

To tell the truth, I’m not sure what I think of it.  On the one hand, I totally agree with the premise.  On the other hand, I see some comments saying how it confirms that it’s okay to be “good enough”, and I have a problem with “good enough” sometimes.  “Good enough” is an excuse often used for formula-feeding when there was no real reason not to breastfeed other than, perhaps, a belief that it would be more difficult.  “Oh I know breastfeeding is BEST, but formula is GOOD ENOUGH.”

This is why we need to change the language we use when discussing the pros and cons of breast vs bottle… rather than portraying formula as normal and breastfeeding as BETTER, we need to portray the breast as the norm, and anything else is below the norm.  As in, instead of saying “breastfed babies have lower incidence of diabetes”, we should be saying “formula-fed babies have higher incidence of diabetes”.  Yes, formula is plenty ‘good enough’, it’s a life saver when breastmilk truly is not available.  But it’s too easy to turn that into a wimping-out excuse.

Anyway, that’s a whole other topic which I’m sure I’ll blog about someday!

When it comes to parenting, what qualifies as “good enough”?  I suppose none of us can possibly be perfect, and “normal” varies so much.  Is it “good enough” as long as we’re not actually abusive?  Is it “good enough” as long as our intentions are good, however our actions might present themselves?  Is it “good enough” if we are constantly striving to learn and do better, even though we may feel every day that we are somehow letting our children down?

The article does say it’s about balance.  And the right balance for me might not be the right balance for you.  I guess I can live with that.  It’s good enough.

Not too many decades ago, it was believed that we had to get our babies on solid food as quickly as possible… with pablum mixed into their formula bottles as early as 3 weeks old, and efforts akin to force-feeding in order to spoon-feed them as soon as possible. Today we know that babies’ digestive systems are not ready to process anything other than mother’s milk (formula is the only alternative, of course, but is still closer to “solid food” from the gut’s perspective) until about six months old, and introducing other foods too early can lead to problems such as leaky gut and illnesses of the digestive system, increased allergies and food sensitivities, higher cardiovascular risk factors and respiratory illnesses.

Despite this knowledge, old habits die hard — many modern parents are pressured by their parents’ or grandparents’ generation to start solids too early, believing that milk is nutritionally inadequate beyond the first few months. What many don’t know is that a large part of the reason for this history of early solids introduction stems from the earliest generations of formula-fed babies and their need for iron.

Early formula was a life-saver for babies who had no access to mother’s milk. However, it quickly became touted as “scientific”, and thus superior to mother’s milk. Entire generations of mothers were erroneously (though probably with the best of intentions) told by their doctors that their milk was “no good” and told to go on formula… even if they had wanted to breastfeed. But the earliest formula lacked iron – science of the time was not able to include bio-available iron in artificial milks.  So any baby on formula required supplemental iron.

Enter pablum, stage left.  Once again, this was a life-saving, vitamin-rich invention, originally intended for babies in hospitals suffering from malnutrition.  And it included iron.

So all babies being fed the scientifically “superior” formula also needed to have pablum, as early as possible, in order to get the iron they required.  But of course, newborns cannot chew, or handle thick pastes, or even take food from a spoon, move it to the back of their mouths and swallow.  So the only way to get their iron was to mix pablum into their bottles.  This became the norm, the standard, the usual and common way that infants were fed.

If your grandmother has ever told you to put some cereal in a bottle to get your baby to sleep through the night because it’s “more substantial” or “more filling” or whatever… she is simply passing on the way that she was taught.   The actual reason why the practice was started has been forgotten.   Even after iron began to be included in formula, this idea of putting cereal in baby’s bottles was so ingrained in popular consciousness that nobody thought twice about it, nobody questioned its logic or its origins.

As recently as when my generation was in diapers, a baby being started on solids at 3 months was still considered a “late” starter.  A three-month-old (or younger), as we now know, is not biologically ready to “eat” yet.   So they had to be “tricked” into taking food.  This was accomplished by making first foods as bland as possible, and mixing them with the baby’s formula or mother’s milk.  First offerings were also to be made quite runny, since babies could not handle anything thicker.

Modern baby-care advice now generally offers the advice of waiting for “signs of readiness”, which include the ability to sit unassisted and interest in your food.  Some medical providers and “experts” still give out the outdated advice that solids may be started at 4 months (to be fair, this is still heavily debated), but most often, the more accurate guideline of “nothing but mother’s milk or formula for at least six months” is seen.  Again to be fair, there may indeed be babies ready at four months — but given the risk of harm when foods are introduced before the gut is ready, it seems sensible to wait until the higher guarantee of six months rather than take the chance.   At any rate, the recommended method is still to start by tricking your baby into believing they are getting the same milk they are accustomed to – only in a spoon – by mixing bland rice cereal into a runny paste.

So pervasive is this perception of the “normal” way to start solids, that many people even believe that 6 months is not a minimum, but a deadline.  That it is somehow nutritionally necessary for babies to ingest ground-up and processed rice by this age or else face deficiencies — when in fact, mother’s milk and even formula contains ALL necessary nutrition (vitamins, fats, proteins, with mother’s milk also providing enzymes, living antibodies and is self-adapting to a growing baby’s changing dietary needs) for at least the first year.

Even more astonishing is the belief that there is a “window of opportunity” for starting solids, somehow thinking that a child will never, ever decide to eat if they are not fed (forcibly if necessary) by a certain age.  Generally the argument is that delayed solids will lead to deficiencies in chewing skills.  There are two arguments against this — first, the usual standard recommendations of solids for this age range do not require any chewing anyway, and second, if this were an actual risk, there should be documented cases of feeding problems definitively caused by delayed introduction of solid foods.   If these exist, I am not aware of any.  In general, feeding problems arise from pre-existing conditions and can cause issues with transitioning to solids — but not the other way around.

In regards to this standard schedule of what, how, and when to feed a baby, what has again been forgotten is the original reason behind the method.   Just as previous generations “forgot” that putting cereal in bottles was originally the only way to get essential iron into formula-fed babies (and was thus not intended to be a precedent for the ideal way to feed ALL babies), our generation has forgotten that the “standard” method and sequence of starting solid foods was intended for the immature, not actually ready for solids, 3 month old (or even younger) baby.  To apply the very same method to the baby of 6 months (or even older), who is significantly more mature in digestive readiness, oral and manipulative skills, with vastly different needs and abilities, is simply not logical.

A more logical way to introduce solid foods with your older baby will be addressed in Time for Solids? Part 2: Skip the Mush!   In the meantime, please remember that giving cereal to a young infant in order to make them “sleep through the night” not only does not work (they will sleep when they are developmentally ready to), but can in fact be very harmful to their unprepared digestive systems.

This point cannot be stressed enough: early solids does not help to “settle” a baby or satisfy them.  A British study in 2004 showed that 40% of mothers interviewed had started solids by 3 months of age, 87% by 4 months, and 95% by 20 weeks — slightly less than 5 months old.  That’s nearly 9 out of 10 babies starting solids before even the earliest possible window of safety, and no more than 5% waiting the more strongly advised full 6 months.  Reasons mostly involved a belief that baby would sleep better or settle better, or pressure from family and friends, and with having received free samples of baby food!

Another important point I’d like to make here… The frequently-heard “sign of readiness” of a baby seeming “unsatisfied” after milk feeds or needing to nurse more often, really has little to do with readiness for solids at all.  It is more likely simply a growth spurt.  Babies often are extra-hungry at 6 weeks and 3 months old as well, typical growth spurt times.  Does that mean they are being undernourished by their milk and need to start solids?  Of course not.  The same is true of an older baby.  Increased hunger simply means they need more calories through their growth spurt.  They are not being underserved by their milk, they just need more of it for the time being.  In fact, mother’s milk is more calorie-dense than solid foods.   Babies therefore need more solid foods to get the same calories and nutrition they would from less milk.

In fact, another risk of early solids introduction, seldom mentioned in the usual instructions mothers are given, is that solid foods will start to replace the more nutritious mother’s milk.  When a baby’s tiny tummy is full of mush, there is no room for the milk they need.  When too much food is given too soon, a baby will nurse less often, which in turns decreases milk production (since it works on supply and demand), creating a self-fulfilling vicious circle whereby the baby “needs” more solids since there is no longer enough milk.

Just remember – a readiness for solids does not equal a need for solids.  If you are in any doubt, there is no harm in waiting.  Those trying to tell you otherwise are usually trying to sell you baby food.