Nutritious snacks for toddlers

I am usually pretty stressed out about making A eat nutritious food. I keep reading articles trying to figure out how to get good quality food to reach his tiny stomach. After months of research here are some things I have arrived at: Courtesy:Babycentre India
• Idli or dosai
• Cheese cubes including paneer
• Sandwiches with tomato slices or chopped cabbage
• Soup sticks, carrot and cucumber sticks with hung curd dip
• Milkshakes with banana, mango, chickoo and strawberry
• 1/2 bun or khari biscuits with a cup of milk
• Semiya or semolina (suji) upma
• Sabudana khichdi or sabudana kheer
• Potato poha (beaten rice)
• Peanut butter on toast (if there is no known family history of nut allergies)
• Khakras (mildly spiced, crisp chapattis, dhoklas (steamed besan or moong dal squares), and khandvi (thin steam cooked besan rolls)
• Boiled sweet potato mashed with cumin powder and lime juice (shakarkand chat )
• Vegetable cutlets
• Boiled potato chaat
• Steamed plantains
• Fruit (apple, orange, pear)

Examples of nutritious sweet dishes include shikran (banana slices lightly mashed into milk and sugar), fruit custard, phirni (rice pudding), badam kheer, sabudana or semiya payasam with raisins, rava kesari or suji halwa, carrot (gajar) halwa, moong dal halwa, wheat (godumai) halwa or kada parshad, shrikhand -- plain or with fruit pulp , milk sweets like rabri, basundi (condensed milk), palkhoa (sweetened reduced milk), thirattupal (sweetened curdled milk)and mishti doi (sweetened yoghurt). Sweets given in small quantities and along with meals are a better idea than bigger portions given as snacks between mealtimes.

Vocab at 18 months

Like I have mentioned earlier, A stays at home with my in laws and has a good exposure to telugu, I tend to talk to him mostly in English and Kannada alternating between the two depending on the occasion. The point is I feel his Kannada speaking skills are hardly developed, he understands what I say in Kannada but doesnt know as many Kannada words as he knows in probably English or Telugu. The other day we were in the bathroom and he used his first kannada sentence "Mama, brush madtini" pointing at his toothbrush. A has never has he done that. Ever before. So that's a great step forward. On that note, I present his vocabulary at eighteen months:
Parts of the body:
kannu ( eyes)
moobu (nose)
kaal (leg)
kibi (ears)

People around him:
geetajji - My mom
dipajja - My dad
nishamaasi - My sis
papajja - My chacha
sujajji - My chachi
tata - My FIL
nani - My MIL
papa - His papa
mama, mummy, amma - Me :)

Others
Aplane (Aeroplane)
kinda (down) paina (up) baita (outside) dinchu ( put me down)
appa ( is his codeword if he gets hurt ) Sometimes he would hit us and show his hand and say 'appa'

Sentences have also made thier way into his tiny vocab: Here are few of them:
mama...Pease gimme mammu..
ninii bantu ( I m sleepy)
brush madtini ( I will brush ...my teeth in this case)

Mammu or Ipad....

A just loves playing on the Ipad! I will write a separate post about all his activities and once he is using the pad he has the utmost concentration with absolutely no regard to whats happening around him, the only thing that breaks his concentration at that point is when somebody is going outside so once in a while I say "okay A, you can play, mama is leaving for office" . At this point he usually jumps and checks if his mama is actually leaving or just playing the fool with him.

However there is another thing which he loves the most and that is his "mammu" and the way i see it "mammu rules all"
Mammu is, well something he loves to eat.

So the other day, around bedtime when he was almost sleepy yet playing with utmost concentration on the ipad while rubbing his eyes massively, mamma asks him "A, you want to sleepy sleepy? Have some mammu n go to sleep"
A looks up and sighs "mammuuuuu......" and comes forward to eat his mammu and then remembers what he left behind and runs back to get the ipad so that he can eat his mammu and play in parellel (Kids these days .. I tell you...)

Now the mammu session and Ipad playing did not get along well and A had to pick between one, so after few minutes of looking back and forth at the mammu and the ipad , he settles for his mammu and bids good night to the ipad. like i said - Mammu rules all! :)

An ode to Steve Jobs!

Dusshera, October 6th '11
The Ipad came into our lives around April '11 and became A's favourite 'toy' in a few weeks, at barely 16 months he would whisk his fingers switching from the angry birds to racing NFS cars to playing air hockey and chatting with Talking Tom....all at ease, thats the magic of the Ipad. At one point S and me were about his addiction. There were times when he would get up in the morning and the first word he would utter would be 'ittic' ...well thats what he would call the ipad earlier.

Steve Jobs passed away today after struggling with 7/9 years of pancreatic cancer and this post is dedicated to his invention that my A loved! Here is a heartfelt thank you from A and his mom for one of your greatest inventions. May you RIP.

What's in a name?

A lot it turns out especially if it stays with you until you turn old! I am talking particularly about nicknames mostly the names we are called in the first 2-3 years of our life. These are the names I ( and the near n dear ones) currently have for my LO ( in the order of frequency of usage):

- His real name

- A shortened version of his real name

- Pittu

- Pinchu

- Ingu

- Gamchu ( His ajja started calling him that now my mom, sis n me have joined in too)

- Pinchuknath

- Boo ( This was what he was called even before he was born. Interesting history behind this name is that it is a mix of the nicknames of his mom n dad, even now a lot of my relatives address him as Boo papa, not sure how long that would stick on)

Vocabulary at 1 year 3 months

Words my LO can say at 1 year 3 months:

Iite( read light)

Mama

Amma

Papa

Bub ( for tub)

Good stores to buy baby clothes

Buying clothes for my little one is a very irritating and stressful experience for me. Don't get me wrong, I do love the experience of shopping whether it is for me or for my loved ones but what gets me ticked off is the unavailablilty of any good clothes for boys - let me explain and you would relate very well to me if you have a baby boy or have recently been to any store to buy clothes for a baby boy - you enter a children clothing store and you are greeted with counters after counters of colorful baby girl clothes ranging from daily wear to some jazzy but really cute party wear to accessories ranging from hand bags to tiny clips to hair bands - all of them matching with a theme and then you are welcome to a really sad section of baby boy clothes ranging mostly from stripes to some cute animals to some cute comments ! I just fail to understand this

Let me list the shops that I usually visit to buy shirts/trousers for my LO

Lilliput - Any of the Lilliput stores in Bangalore are good enough but I visit the one on Com street more often as I used to work out of M G Rd office for quite a while. The one in Mantri mall also has a good collection for boys.

Gini n Joni - They have some really cute collection but in my personal opinion are a little over priced so I generally opt for this only if I really like something a LOT.