Our week in images

Before I rearrange our shelves tonight, I would like to revise what we've done this past week. A bit tired after a whole weekend of activities, including a wonderful and totally unplanned trip to a nearby farm, I am going to summarize our week in pictures. We are so lucky!!! We've set out for a walk this morning and been invited by a young farmer to have a look at all his poultry. After a week playing with the new set of farm animal magnets, transferring wooden eggs, and reading Rosie's walk, a visit to a poultry farm on Sunday morning was just ideal.

Hand-eye coordination skills:

Turning on the lights.

Getting the plug in the socket.

Eating with spoon and fork at the same time...

Gross motor skills:

Dragging her chair.

Climbing onto her chair.

And our trip to the farm:

A visit to the pediatrician

We have been scolded by a doctor today, can you believe it? I was so surprised I haven't even answered back. He said I haven't been feeding her right. She is approximately in the 3rd percentile. I knew M is small -both short and thin-, I am not a big woman myself and we have had this problem all the time. At the beginning we were told to bottle feed her in order to make her put on weight. Nobody succeeded at convincing me and time proofed it was right to breastfeed her exclusively up to the sixth month (a bit more, actually). During the first months she put on weight and grew all right, nearly reaching the 30th percentile. Lately, after the 8th month or so she has been growing, slowly, but growing.
Today the doctor, an old-fashioned, severe doctor, has scolded me and told me to give up breastfeeding "'cause the breast is not feeding her at all now". Humm, my dear doctor, let me disbelieve you. If it weren't for the breast, she would be much smaller... Since she was able to sit and showed interest in food, we have let her lead the weaning and this has meant that some times she was not eating much. Nevertheless, she kept trying new things and eating solids every day, apart of course of nursing on demand. This doctor has probably never heard of "baby-led weaning" but I don't find this surprising. What surprises me is that a doctor may still have this kind of behavior as if he were THE authority. He has scolded me as if I were a young girl doing mischief. Then, the doctor's nurse has meant to correct me when I was explaining my daughter what they would do to her next. To be more exact, the nurse's words have been: "don't tell her so many things, just say "it's nothing, it's nothing 'cause otherwise she complains more". "Oh, my!-I've thought- how many of the attitudes towards children I dislike in only 10 minutes!" I firmly believe it is healthier and more honest to explain things than to discredit a child's own experience. My baby sometimes complains, whimpers or cries but never without a reason and we have encouraged her expression of feelings. I feel to say "it's nothing" is just to repress the expression of feeling.
Well, I would like to see the positive side of this. From now onwards, I will offer M food more often and try to get her to eat more. I won't  force her, though. She knows more than I do when she is thirsty or hungry. It amazes me how doctors tell you how and when to feed a baby as if the baby would not exist.
I wish the real patients at the pediatrician's surgery, that's children, were treated more respectfully.
What is your opinion? I would like to hear about your experiences at the pediatrician's surgery.
Do you believe it is good to tell a child "it is nothing" when something is indeed happening to her?

On our shelves this month

When the year -and the month- started I wanted to prepare a basket with winter items but I always try to follow M's current interest and as she has lately been very much into putting things inside other things and looking for animals in books, I thought this would make a better theme. Her new attraction are farm animals (one of her Christmas presents was a whole set of farm animal magnets) and looking for ideas around the house I discovered we had several hen-related activities that suited her interests.
This is what I prepared for one of her shelves.

 

The first item on the lower shelf is an imbucare box, followed by a stacking rings activity where you can find an egg hidden behind the last ring -the red one. Then we have a stuffed hen and some egg-boxes, which my mother painted for M, and finally a basket of wooden eggs. On the upper shelf I placed three books related to our theme: the farm.

 

Journal

Since M turned 12 months last December, I have been a bit more disciplined in keeping a journal. She is learning new things every day and at such fast a pace that I find it difficult to record everything.
Something she started doing last month was pointing at her right hand fingers with the left forefinger when hearing "one, two, three, four, five" (both in English and Catalan).
She spends much time putting things through holes. For that purpose I have given her different items: a box with a slot and some bottle caps; a container with a small opening and a handful of hazelnuts, a game I made with a cardboard box (putting bottle caps through the hole in the image below).

Today she has spent around 20 minutes putting hazelnuts through the opening on a small container and asking me to take them out every time she had them all inside (sorry for the mess in the background...)

She now masters drinking water from a small glass.  She started asking for water using the word "ababa" last week and we are so happy to pour more every time she is thirsty.  In a couple months I intend to set a water station and she will be able to pour herself a glass.

She is also interested in getting dressed. I left a bag full of old clothes to give away in the corridor and she has spent some time trying to put some on.

 

Other activities she is very much into are putting the caps on bottles and putting eggs in egg boxes.

(I apologize for the poor quality of the picture)