Tag: toddler

Day in the Life: 17 Months

8:00 AM: Time to wake up! I go get Theo from his crib and let him scoot around the downstairs for a while. His favorite activity right now is going into his room to sort diapers – it will keep him occupied endlessly. We went up to Daddy’s office to visit and Theo nursed for about 10 minutes.

8:45 AM: Breakfast time! A banana and yogurt pouch. I am about to buy stock in Chiquita! We eat a lot of bananas here these days.

9:15 AM: Theo & I head to speech therapy. It’s only a 5 minute drive from our house, which makes it convenient! Theo is in speech therapy for an expressive speech delay. I will share more about this very soon!

9:30 AM: Speech therapy sessions where Theo works with the therapist – mostly the two of them playing together while the therapist teaches me the best way to help him at home, in between sessions.

10:00 AM: Therapy is over. We see that the fire trucks are out at the Davidson Fire Station, so we go say hi to the trucks!

10:15 AM: drop off some packages in the UPS box, and head to Target to retrieve our pick-up order. This week if you do $100 in baby items (diapers, wipes, snacks, etc.) you get a $20 gift card to use at a later time! Target pickup is the best ever. It was so busy today though! We had to wait a little while.

10:45 AM: head to the car wash and McDonald’s drive thru because we are parents of the year and let our child eat Happy Meal’s (he loves them and I don’t have to prepare any food – it’s a win-win).

11:15 AM: lunchtime!

11:40 AM: we go upstairs to play a little bit. I never know with him exactly when he will be ready for his nap (it’s almost always between noon and 12:30 PM), so I wanted to do a little activity with him. We practiced opening and closing Easter eggs, and I put mini M&M’s inside as a little incentive. He loved it, but lost steam pretty quickly. I think Theo is addicted to mini M&M’s though (again, parents of the year LOL). Also, big news: Theo took ONE step today before he fell down. We cheered him on like he won the lottery.

12:00 PM: Naptime, Naptime! (sung in the tune of “Backpack, Backpack” from Dora the Explorer)

2:15 PM: Theo wakes up, but I leave him in his crib until 3 so he can have some additional quiet time. I took a quick 15 minute nap, because I forgot to have coffee this morning and my head was killing me.

3:00 PM: Theo is up and we go upstairs for playtime and a snack. After snack, we do some play pretend with the baby doll, flash cards, and play ball.

3:30 PM: Theo does independent play while I work on some blog posts.

4:30 PM: Theo goes over to the baby gate and says “tttt, tttt” which means “eat” so I give him another snack to hold him over until dinnertime. Sandy stole most of his granola bar, so I had to go get him a second one. He continues independent play while he watches Songs for Littles.

5:45 PM: Dinnertime! Theo still isn’t really eating meat, so he gets KidFresh macaroni & cheese and fruit.

6 PM: Bathtime

6:15 PM: Between dinner/bath and bedtime, I have started the traditon of letting Theo watch one or two Dora episodes in our bed, before he goes to bed. I think it’s a nice way for him to end the day! Also, once he is on our bed, he usually stays put. He will scoot around the bed but it’s one time when he isn’t all over the place. Sometimes he nurses in the afternoon/evening, sometimes he doesn’t! It just depends on the day. I took a shower and put on a face mask that scared the living daylights out of him. Poor kid! He recovered though.

7 PM: Bedtime!!

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Toys for your Toddler that Celebrate Diversity

It’s important to us to expose Theo to people and things that he doesn’t see every day in our house. Since we don’t get out much, the best way to do this is to offer diverse books, toys, and TV shows in our home. Here are some of our favorite toddler-friendly toys that celebrate diversity.

Fisher Price Doll House: this doll house has little people who are both white and people of color. I personally wish they would sell a dollhouse with a mixed race family!

Baby Doll: this particular baby doll can be found in a variety of skin tones and they are also anatomically correct which I think is very important as well as you and your little one learn about body parts!

Little People Community Helpers: I love this pack of community helpers. Everyone is diverse, and it’s a great opportunity to talk about the different helpers our little ones will encounter.

Stuffed Dolls: this set of 5 stuffed dolls is perfect for snuggling, and I love that they represent a variety of different skin tones. It’s perfect for a toddler who is learning to play pretend with babies!

Wooden Puzzle: this puzzle from Discovery Toys is amazing and represents many differences, including one wearing glasses and a little girl in a wheelchair.

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Cheerios Sensory Bin

For Valentine’s Day, I wanted to do something special for Theo, since he basically does the same things every day: play with cars, play with balls, play with the dogs, eat, nap, watch Songs for Littles. He seems generally happy, but things have to get a little boring for him!

This was a really easy sensory bin to do. I ground up Cheerios in the food processor. It took a shocking amount of cereal – almost a whole box! But again, I’m not sure what I was expecting. I wanted to do a food-base because Theo is still putting everything in his mouth these days.

Throw in some random kitchen utensils, and you have a sensory bin! He played with this for about 20 minutes, which was a huge win for me.

Underneath, I put his activity mat from Noa so we could attempt to easily clean this up.

Any ideas for other sensory bin or sensory play activities??

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