Daycare Instructions

March 16, 2010
Dear Tewabech,

I’d like to express how happy we are to have found a caring, loving day care for our little Ivan. Though it will be difficult for us to leave our wee prince with another adult during the day, John and I are looking at this opportunity as a chance for Ivan to learn well from his second teacher in life.

I’ve taken the time to record Ivan’s comfort habits and favourite activities, along with writing notes on his daily exercises.

NAPPING

At home Ivan sleeps takes a nap at 8:30 AM and 12:30 PM. He can be counted on to sleep between 1 to 2 hours.

Before each nap we have a wind down period for him where he is given a bottle of formula and goats milk away from distractions, and his head is stoked as he closes his eyes to enjoy his bottle.
He sleeps in a darkened room, and is used to sleeping in a peaceful, quite environment.
When it’s time for his nap, a receiving blanket is laid on the bed, corner folded as if to swaddle him, and the blanket is wrapped around his chest, arms free to move. As he is being wrapped we tell him, “It’s nap time Ivan.”
At his crib, he is placed on his back, given his soother and his dog, and rolled on his left side. He will then generally close his eyes and snuggle with his puppy. A couple of blankets are pulled over his body and we quietly exit the room with the baby monitor.

FEEDING

When he arises from sleep, he is used to having something for a snack. Please see chart below for suggestions. He eats a lot of food and consequently has a sinky diaper every two hours.

At twelve months this is an example of his typical daily food intake:

6:30 AM Breakfast : 4 TBSP yogurt, a handful of pea-sized apple chunks, a chopped boiled egg
9:30 AM Snack: A nutritious, homemade muffin, 20 organic blueberries
11:30 AM Lunch: Brown rice mixed with red lentil stew and hummus (3/4 cup)
2:30 PM Snack: Plain, baked sole fish (2 oz)
5:00 PM Dinner: Half a tofu hotdog, a handful of peas and chopped chicken

Note: He drinks pre-boiled, pre-cooled water from a sippy cup and he likes to have his cup available to him during waking hours.

Milk:

Consumes vitamin fortified formula mixed with goat’s milk. He has had diarrhea with cow’s milk.

Formula Preparation:

• 180 ml pre-boiled, pre-cooled water
• 3 scoops Enfamil A+ formula power

Shake. Pour 4 oz into milk bottle. Serve lukewarm by bottle in hot water or microwave. Wash empty bottle in soap and hot water each time.

Note: Every morning we will bring over four pre-mixed bottles for Ivan so they can be heated and served.

Food:

Ivan does not know how to eat with a utensil yet. Mostly he is spoon-fed purees or mashed foods. We have given him finger foods (organic millet puffs, tiny ham cubes, chicken cubes, peas, scrambled eggs with cheese) to eat and he enjoys that. He doesn’t know what a bowl’s function is and will likely dump whatever is in the bowl onto the high chair tray/floor. A major goal as parents is encourage self-feeding after the age of one.

Examples of favourite foods:

Chopped Pureed/Mashed Pieces
Avocado Yams & Apple Fish (baked sole or salmon)
Banana Butternut squash Organic Blueberries
Kiwi Carrots Chicken
Cheese (limit due to salt) Beets & Prunes Scrambled eggs
Ham (limit due to salt) Pears Cooked Alphabet pasta


I use http://weelicious.com/ to find more delicious recipes for Ivan with great variety.

ACTIVITIES

Ivan is still crawling but making efforts to stand. He can free-style stand but he hasn’t noticed his own ability yet.

He loves board books. He will sit on your lap willingly to read. This is about the only time he likes lap-sitting.We have a baby who is big on maintaining his personal space. His preference is to turn the pages by himself so I usually fit my fingers in the pages following in order for him to turn them easily.

Ivan enjoys sorting objects and playing with blocks. He loves standing behind the vacuum and helping to push the machine along the floor. We think he must believe it to be a big truck.

WARNINGS

He is still at an age where most everything gets stress-tested and then goes right in his mouth for further evaluation. We’ve had to watch him closely for storing chockables in his mouth. Bend him forward (without startling him), put your pinky in the corner of his mouth to open it, then flick out the object with a finger sweep.

He is teething so he is biting things. He has bitten his mom and his dad a few times in the last month. He usually bites out of frustration and we immediately move him away from us and tell him “No biting!”