Bring Out the Best in your Baby! BIRTH - 1 WEEK OLD

From Birth to their first week of life:

Social and Emotion:
Development (Activities to encourage your baby's development)
- Hold and cuddle your baby often even if baby seems troubled
- Cradle your baby when feeding whether this be breast or bottle. Be sure to remain eye contact as this helps with bonding.
- Spend time with your baby in the short amounts of time they are awake, this helps in getting to know your baby.
- Softly massage baby after bath and before a nights sleep, this helps soothe and relax your baby.
Development (stages you can enjoy)
- When an object or face is moved slowly across their line of vision, baby may briefly focus and follow
- When asleep, baby is generally unaware of surrounding sounds

Language and Understanding
Development (Activities to encourage your baby's development)
- Smile and talk and be sure to stay close to your baby's face
- Keep eye contact when talking to your baby and remain close to face
- Singing! Don't forget the all important singing to your baby. This helps language development
Development (stages you can enjoy)
- Baby uses crying to communicate hunger, feelings, cold or hot, needing a nappy change, etc.
- Baby prefers human faces than toys and other patterned, colours objects
- Baby is startled by an loud sound

Hand Movements
Development (Activities to encourage your baby's development)
- Stroke your baby's hands allowing baby to clasp your fingers
Development (stages you can enjoy)
- Baby's hands are usually closed but not in a tight fist
- Baby's hands close around objects placed in their hands as a reflex

Body Movements
Development (Activities to encourage your baby's development)
- Encourage head control. You can do this by holding baby upright with one hand supporting your baby's head and back. Don't forget to smile and talk to your baby.
Development (stages you can enjoy)
- Baby lies on their tummy with knees drawn in underneath
- When held providing support under arms, baby may make stepping movements. These will disappear by two months of age.

If you enjoyed reading these baby posts. Tune in next week for 2 to 6 weeks Baby development.
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Monster High - Spectra Vondergeist Costume (Halloween Edition)

Have you decided what you want to be on halloween? Is Monster high a choice? Well a couple days ago i had the chance of making a costume resembling the Spectra doll from Monster High. Everything spooky and fantastic. Spectra is a ghost ghoul who runs the ghostly gossip at Monster High!

Finished product:

What you will need:

Materials

1. Silver cardboard (A4)
2. Your choice of silver string pattern (half a metre)
3. A black singlet
4. Purple material of your choice (i chose velvet) (1 metre)
5. Mesh netting material of your choice (i chose the softest shiny mesh) (half a metre)
6. Velcro (5cm)
7. Elastic waist band (half a metre)

Equipments

1. Glue gun
2. Sewing machine (can sew by hand or make entire outfit from glue gun)

Instructions

Skirt

1. Measure the person/childs waist, double the measurement by 2 and decide how long you want your       skirt to be. Then draw out the measurements onto your purple material. (example: waist = 40cm)

2. Place your cut material over your mesh and pin down the corners/sides and cut the mesh to size.             (ends up the same size as the purple material)

3. Get the elastic waistband and hold it around the child's waist, fit it making it tighter or more             loose for comfort. Then cut.

4. Sew or glue gun the edges of the purple material to prevent fraying. Folding in about half a cm.

5. Fold the material and mesh together four times to create a smaller width.

6. Decide which side you would like the bottom part of your skirt to be and cut the two edges to         create the points at the bottom of the skirt. (If the material frays you may want to fold and glue gun         the bottom edges or just lightly burn the edges with a lighter)

7. Sew or glue gun the two 30cm sides together so that they are attached (including the mesh. (the             length section of the skirt)

8. This is the tricky part. You want to get the elastic waistband and sew the edges together so that it becomes a complete circle. Now you need to sew the back of the skirt to the elastic. Just a locked stitch will do.

9. Stretch out the elastic and sew the elastic onto the skirt with a sewing machine DONT             FORGET THE MESH. (You can try and do this with a glue bun but it will take longer as you will       need to hold it in place until it dries)

Top

1. Measure the singlet and decide how wide you want the purple section of your top to be. Cut it out         with an extra 1cm on each side. Iron it down to keep a 1cm fold on each side.

2. Cut the patterned silver thread to fit the width of the purple material with an extra 1cm on each side.

3. Glue gun the silver pattered edges to the back of the purple material.

3. Centre the material on your singlet into place. (fix it to your liking) Then sew or glue gun onto the         centre of the singlet.

Belt

1. Measure the waist and cut out the silver cardboard with whatever width size you like. If the               cardboard is short. Cut another piece with an extra 1cm and glue the edges together. (do this however many times you need to get your desired length)

2. Find an object of which is round and flat then trace it onto the back of the silver cardboard to create         little ringlets for the belt. You will then cut the centre of the circles to shape it like a ring. Glue the           pieces to the silver band.

3. Stick velcro to the back of the belt for easy wear.

There you have your finished costume. If you want the matching boots you can either,

1. get a pair of old black boots and use the left over purple material and glue gun it to the boot covering it entirely. Or,
2. Find a pair of socks in the same colours. Or,
3. Make a pair of socks with the leftover material from scratch.

Feel free to contact me via email if you have any further questions. Thank You.

(ps. add some temporary purple hair chalk or go for the wig to look spooky fantastic!)

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Autumn Flower Girl (my hidden talent)

On one lovely autumn morning i had the pleasure of working on my partners nieces hair. She came up to me asking me if i could do her hair for the day. I didn't know what to do but i wanted to do something different and unique. So i took the chance of doing a hairstyle that i had never done before.

Little girls hairs can be quite a challenge to do because majority of the time they cannot sit as still as you want them too. (See below for tips on keep your child still) 
So im not sure what to call it, maybe a braided rose? I haven't decided on a name yet or if this hairstyle already exists and has a name. But After playing around with her hair for about 10 minutes i decided on this look.

Took about half an hour to 40 minutes to do this hairstyle. It does not need any appliances or hair products but if you'd like no fly aways and a smooth and clean braid you could put some wax before braiding.

Tips on keeping a child still:

• Give them something to do that would keep them in that one spot and not move around much. i.e. an ipad or tablet of some sort with games, a phone
• Put a movie on in which they can watch and not be bored

For really young children or any child at all i do not recommend bribing to get them to stay still. This could turn into a habbit and not a really good one at that.