{30 Days of Simple Toddler Toys}

Walk down any aisle in the toy section of a store and you will find that the majority of toys move, make noise, require batteries and/or little to no imagination whatsoever.  Shane and I have always preferred G to have simple toys, ones that require him to use some sort of imagination when playing with them.

Don't misunderstand me.  We have our fair share of battery-operated toys in our house, but they often end up in our own makeshift "Land of the Misfit Toys".  You will usually find the power button of any flashy or noise-making toy in the "off" position and that's not because they drive us crazy, (okay, it's partially because they drive us crazy).  It's mostly because we prefer to see G using his imagination and hear G making those tractor sounds rather than the pre-recorded digital sounds coming from speakers.

I realized while shopping for G's first Christmas that finding the simple toys that we were looking for was not an easy task.  We were looking for wooden alphabet blocks, that's it.  I had to visit 3 different stores before settling on a gift set that had wooden blocks, but also included legos, puzzles, and more that G obviously wasn't ready for at only 8 months old.  While this turned out to be a great toy that I didn't regret purchasing (we put the toys he wasn't ready for back for gifts later in the year), I still couldn't believe how difficult it was to find plain, simple, time-tested wooden alphabet blocks, like these.

The idea for this series of blog posts came to me as we were making G's Christmas list this year.  Other families have to be struggling to find simple yet engaging toys for their toddlers.  I will feature one type of simple toy each day in hopes of helping other families choose some imagination-inducing options for their children for the holidays!

Day 1:  Gear Boards
Day 2:  Play Dough
Day 3:  Wooden Blocks
Day 4:  Soft Play Climbers
Day 5:  Play Kitchen
Day 6:  Play Food
Day 7:  Dolls
Day 8:  Puzzles
Day 9:  Costumes and Dress-Up Clothing
Day 10:  Building Blocks
Day 11:  Books
Day 12:  Lacing Cards
Day 13:  Lacing Beads
Day 14:  Art Supplies
Day 15:  Bathtub Art Supplies
Day 16:  Peg Boards
Day 17:  Sorting Board
Day 18:  Alphabet Letters
Day 19:  Musical Instruments
Day 20:  Nesting Blocks
Day 21:  Toy Vehicles
Day 22:  Trains and Tracks
Day 23:  Sensory Bins
Day 24:  Puppets
Day 25:  Bubbles
Day 26:  Shape Roller Coasters
Day 27:  Shape Sorters
Day 28:  Cooperative Games
Day 29:  Flannel Board and Felt Pieces
Day 30:  Box

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Feeding Update Friday: Week Eight (and Six and Seven...)

Life has been crazy the past few weeks, and I've been slacking on feeding updates.  We have been hanging in and doing pretty well with feeding.  Greyson has been consistent with his volumes.  You'll notice that G eats a whole lot of yogurt.  We have found that this is his "go to" food, as he really actually likes it.  The reason we give him so much yogurt is because he takes the most volume of it.  We try to switch it up with the flavors of yogurt.  This is one of my questions for The Children's Institute is how can we start to move him to a bigger variety of foods and keep up his volumes.

You may also see a difference in the volumes that he's eating.  Please understand that we've been a bit more flexible with our mealtimes because of our schedule this week, and are also starting to allow G to pick at crunchy foods more which won't show in his volumes.  It doesn't mean that he is doing worse, he's doing very well.  We've also gotten too lax in our recording of his eating (woops! will be working to fix that...)

The most amazing development in the last few weeks happened just this Tuesday...see video below.

Foods that G has eaten the last few weeks:
vanilla yogurt
whole yogurt with honey
strawberry banana yogurt
mango yogurt
banana yogurt
chicken and dumpling soup with butter (pureed)
pureed ravioli with butter
cheese curls
chicken and rice soup with butter
bean and bacon soup with butter
Ritz crackers
white cheddar cheese curls
Life cereal

Total volumes this week:
Saturday:  6 ounces, 2 cheese curls, and nibbles of party food (hummus, crackers, M&Ms, etc)
Sunday:  9 ounces
Monday:  9 ounces and 20 mL
Tuesday:  7 ounces and 2 cheese curls
Wednesday:  8 ounces and 15 mL
Thursday:  6 ounces and nibbles of rice cakes

And now for the amazing and coolest, most awesome and wonderful development thus far in our feeding journey, all caught on tape.  Ladies and gentlemen, our son has discovered self-feeding.

Feeding Update Friday: Week Five

Greyson continues to amaze (and amaze, and amaze, and amaze...) us.  Shane and I have been battling some kind of bug that made us very achy and exhausted, and Greyson has been slightly congested.  Even battling a small cold, Greyson has continued progressing with his feeding.  We were almost sure that his feeding would suffer when he wasn't feeling well, and so far that has not been the case.  What a champ!

Amazingly, Greyson has not caught what Shane and I both had.  We have some not-so-secret-but-relatively-unknown weapons for keeping Greyson's cold a "small" one, and believe it's the reason he hasn't gotten our bug.  We've been boosting his immune system for about 2 weeks now with vitamins and supplements.  Stay tuned for a post about those...

So despite the yuckiness in the house this week, Greyson's been moving forward with eating.  He's barely showing any poor behaviors right now, and has actually asked for yogurt a few times!  YES, folks, asked to eat.  I know, I know.  Tear.  He has taken a slight slide back with his crunchy food, but we continue to work on it.

When we met with the Children's Institute, they told us not to focus so much on how many different foods he was eating, but to focus on the volume of food he was eating.  You will definitely see a difference in the number of foods he's eating, but you will see huge increases in the volume of food he is eating.

Foods that G has eaten this week:
whole yogurt with honey
juice
chicken noodle soup with butter (pureed)
penguins
vanilla yogurt
hot tea with honey
chicken and dumpling soup with butter (pureed)
pizza

Total Intakes:
Friday:  10.5 ounces and 1/2 penguin cracker
Saturday:  8 ounces, 10 mL
Sunday:  5.5 ounces (we had to skip a meal this day)
Monday:  12 ounces (1.5 ounces of that was hot tea)  (our golden day!)
Tuesday:  11 ounces
Wednesday:  10.5 ounces, 2.5 penguin crackers
Thursday:  11 ounces