Learning Lily: Baby

As parents, we were very excited to be Lily's first teachers. The following resources we found are amazing:

Healthy Families
This free program was offered to me after I gave birth so I signed up and I'm glad I did. They send an assigned worker for a weekly home visit. Our home visitor (Camielle Navarro) provides us information like parenting and child care resources, brain building activities we can do with the baby, milestones to expect (through ages and stages questionnaire) and upcoming parent events. Sometimes, she would also be bring supplies such as diapers, tooth wipes, toys or materials for making age-appropriate toys.

With homemade rattles

Babytime at the library
This is every Tuesday at the Wheeler Taft Abbett library. Since both of us have work on Tuesday, Lolo Johnny and Loley Emily takes Lily to this 1-hour event for some activities. Lola Let was able to take Lily one-time as well.
Video

Swimming lessons
We took advantage of the free baby splash classes in Demont Family Swim School. The class is for 2-5 month old babies. It was both scary and exciting for us parents. It was a relief that Lily was calm most, if not all, of the time.  At about 10 months, Lily joined the Little Froggy 1 class for a month so we can use the certificate we won at a school auction. The class still requires to swim with a parent of course but with submersion.

Mini Skool
After Topeng's parents went home to the Philippines and running out of nanny options, we decided to enroll Lily in a daycare near our workplace. We were a bit apprehensive at first due to the teacher-child ratio (5:1 or 11:2) and the thought of leaving our baby with strangers. Eventually, we got comfortable with it as the director and teachers were very re-assuring and I could always check up on her. The daycare is also on a food program so that's less kitchen work for me. As much as possible, they also obliged with my request for no-salt and no-sugar food for her.  Since I'm also not able to find some playmates for her yet, it was a good opportunity for her to see other kids.

Baby Signing Time
Our colleague, Ken, gave some copies of baby signing time videos to teach Lily. It was awesome seeing Lily do the signs and even try to say the words. Some recent studies discourage watching TV before age 1 but if you would like to make an exception, we highly recommend this. More communication equals less fussing!