Some of baby’s favorite toys are her musical instruments!  They’re open-ended toys, meaning baby can play with them in a variety of ways: by making sounds with them, by teething on them, by touching their various parts.  These are just a few examples.  All of these examples work on baby’s fine motor skills and promote self-discovery, self-exploration and self-play.  These toys promote singing and listening to music as well as making music and engaging in play as a family.

 

We love Melissa and Doug’s Deluxe Band Set because it comes with a variety of different instruments to play with, their Learn-to-Play Piano and Hape Early Melodies My first Ukelele.

Our favorite Pandora stations to jam with baby are “Baby Einstein (Children’s) Radio” and “Lullaby Themes (Children’s) Radio”

Making baby delicious food can be simple and quick.  With this recipe for pea soup the whole family can eat something yummy together 🙂

What you will need:

1 package frozen peas

2 cups boiling water

Vitamix or blender

Directions:

Boil one whole package of organic frozen peas in the 2 cups of boiling water for 12-15 minutes or until peas are very tender.

Place entire contents of water and peas into Vitamix for 2-3 minutes on medium and gradually to high speed. (If you’re using a conventional blender allow contents to cool before blending. Vitamix blenders are used in commercial kitchens and are manufactured to withstand high heat & even heat ingredients up to make soup).

Pour contents for baby into a small ceramic dish and allow to cool.

Pour contents for adults into ceramic bowls and drizzle with olive oil, sea salt and ground herbs (ex: oregano, thyme and chili flakes).

Once everyones portions have cooled accordingly, enjoy! 😀

 

The PilloBebe CorkiMat is made from natural cork, bamboo and cotton batting.  Modules of 4, 6 and 9 tiles are available and each pad comes a part and connects with velcro strips.  The covers are made of 100% GOTS organic cotton.  The covers can be removed and washed.  The pads are thick and provide lots of cushion while also offering a firm play area for baby to sit, crawl, roll and play.

Pictured above is the Campers & Pebbles Yellow mats.

The product was invented by two parents who wanted to create a place to play that is eco-friendly, made of natural materials and handmade.  Here is the link to their Etsy shop.

Calendula is a plant with healing properties and is made into a first aid ointment to heal dry skin, chapped lips, scrapes and diaper rash.  One of the reasons why it is so wonderful is that it is gentle enough to use on baby’s skin but is effective enough to us on any member of the household.

Boiron, the leading manufacturer for homeopathic preparations and remedies, makes a topical Calendula First Aid ointment.  This is used for healing scrapes, cuts, minor burns, diaper rash and chapped skin– naturally!  Baby scratched my face recently and I applied our first aid ointment to the affected area.  The skin became a brighter red on the area where the ointment was applied and then soon after all of the redness, including the area where the scrape was, returned to a normal hue.  A tiny scab appeared and then fell off making the total healing time of the scrape two days.

Weleda skincare has a line of calendula products just for baby.  These products are gentle and effective in preventing and protecting baby’s skin as well as healing if a diaper rash does occur.  We apply Weleda Baby & Child Calendula diaper rash cream with each diaper change.

The thick, oily consistency is designed to create a protective barrier on baby’s sensitive skin making it ideal for everyday diapering use and the prevention and healing of diaper rash.  So far, this product has worked to prevent diaper rash for our baby since birth.  The cream is all natural and smells divine.  When baby does get an irritation on her skin it clears it up very quickly.

Another favorite of ours from this line is the Weleda Shampoo & Body Wash as well as the Calendula Body Lotion.  Both are wonderful additions to a natural bath routine.  And I will say that a little goes a long way.  We use the shampoo and body wash with our Under the Nile organic cotton wash cloths & our Viverano hooded organic cotton towel for a soft and gentle bathing experience.

Our favorite after-bath body oil for baby, Wish Garden’s Oh Baby! Oil, is made with calendula flower and lavender essential oil. The oil is perfect for a moisturizing an calming massage for baby before bedtime. It even helps soothe mama as well.  Try it out and have Sweet dreams… Zzz…

Avocado is a great first food for baby because it’s highly nutritious, rich in good fats and you don’t have to do much preparation.

Here’s what I did: I mashed up a quarter of an organic avocado in a small stainless steel mixing bowl and added a generous amount of breastmilk to form a smooth, liquidy consistency. I transferred the mixture into a ceramic dish and offered baby small amounts to taste from a little spoon. It was home made and easy 🙂

The tools we used to prepare and feed baby with were handpicked with a lot of thought and love. Some of the items we had at home, some were purchased online and some we got the day of at Nathan & Co, a local shop in Rockridge. 

Baby food prep & feeding tools:

 Core Kitchen Bamboo + Silicone All-Purpose Spatula for mashing

Core Kitchen Bamboo + Silicone Pointed Spatula for slicing and spreading

Core Kitchen Bamboo + Silicone Spoon for multipurpose use

It took me a really long time to find stainless steel baby spoons that were made in USA and not made of plastic. They were purchased online here:

Baby Liberty Soft-Bite Spoons

What we had at home:

Miniature stainless steel mixing bowl for preparing the mash

Miniature ceramic bowl for serving

No harsh fragrances

No extra scrubbing or soaking

No harsh detergents

Just put your laundry in the wash on a regular cycle with these two ingredients and you will have fresh clean, stain-free laundry once you’re finished!

As a new mom I’ve been doing extra laundry that has stains from baby poop, pee, sweat, spit-up… You name it! And a lot of baby’s clothes are white. I don’t have a lot of extra time to spend using spot removers or soaking clothes and I’m conscious about using gentle products in baby’s laundry. So what are they, you’re asking? All right, I’ll tell you!

Ecover Zero liquid laundry detergent (supposed to be one of the safest detergents on the market without harmful additives, chemicals or harsh fragrances)

&

Seventh Generation non-chlorine bleach (unscented)

Add half a cap of Ecover Zero and about 1/2 a cup of the non-chlorine bleach to your regular cycle and stained clothes will come out clean!!

Try to wash clothes soon after the staining occurs for best results 🙂

Finding natural diapers that didn’t leak all the time was no easy task…Until we found Naty Nature Babycare Eco-Diapers

We truly, madly, deeply love them!

We like knowing that what we put on baby’s skin is also gentle on the earth 💚

I was amazed in the earliest days of motherhood that most of my concerns for baby were solved by the simple application of my own breastmilk.  This includes a gooey eye, diaper rash and a funny smelling ear!  In fact, due to the antibacterial and healing properties of breastmilk, there are many surprising and fantastic alternative uses for breastmilk.

Read more in “Code Name: Mama’s” article, 58 Medicinal, Cosmetic and Other Alternative Uses for Breastmilk