Easy and Delicious muffins for your 'tinies'

The twins started out their weaning adventures with a few purées and mostly finger food to explore and suck. Early favourites were toast fingers, steamed veg sticks and rice cakes. I did try to spoon feed them as much as I could, but they decided at about 10 months that they wanted to self feed and we haven't looked back! They are generally happy to explore a range of flavours and textures when self feeding and I love to watch them grow in confidence. 

Meal times are  messy but less stressful. 

Lately, they have been getting bored of sandwiches for lunch and I stumbled across a fab looking recipe for savoury muffins on this great site.

The muffins include both protein and vegetables and the veg can be swapped to almost anything. They were quick and easy to make and the twins loved them. I quite liked them too!

Some other finger food lunch ideas...

• Wraps
• Pitta and houmous
• Crackers and cheese
• Spanish omelette
• Cheese pancakes
• Falafel

Do you have any great lunch ideas to share?

Noisy containers

The twins are really into collecting objects in pots at the moment and love transporting objects from one place to another. We have a rockery in the garden and they've been driving me mad, moving the stones around the garden and onto the grass. 

I decided to give them some metal containers and showed them how to collect the stones. They've really enjoyed hearing the satisfying clink as the stones go in and I think this is the main motivation! This activity is great for developing fine motor skills and for developing early maths skills. The placing of the stones one by one is a skill needed for counting when they grow older.

Friday Favourite

Baby E's Friday Pick

This is not a sponsored post, it is an honest opinion of a product we love and that I bought

 I stumbled upon the barn when in a local toy shop....well actually Baby E stumbled upon it with GREAT excitement.  

I brought it home and E loved it, she spent ages inspecting the animals (wooden), opening and closing the doors and 'posting' the animals into the barn (no surprise there).

Baby E played for at least 20 mins whilst I sat beside her and read a magazine and had a cup of tea 

BLISSFUL!

 A few weeks later I saw the castle on Zulily so thought I would buy that as well.  

My husband introduced it to her on one of their 'daddy & daughter days' and the feedback was the same: she loved it. The door pulls down AND the tops of the turrets come off- very exciting! 

Although I think my husband enjoyed playing with it a little more then she did (if possible).

They can both be found on Fiesta Craft.  I have also JUST noticed that they have a garage AND an ark.  

 Baby E has already had endless hours of enjoyment and she STILL loves when we bring them out!

The boxes are strong cardboard (type material) so may not be SUPER durable-although mine are still in great condition.

Another bonus is that they all clean away nicely into the boxes

Money well spent!

Discovery Bottles

Discovery Bottles: An oldie (idea) but a goodie

Exploration and Sensory Play for Babies

 

These are some of the simple discover bottles we made for our babies when they were sitting up and wanting to explore everything.  Discover bottles are SO easy to make and babies love exploring them.  
All you need are old bottles and materials to put inside.  

*If you worry of the lids coming off you can glue the lids once you have filled them with a hot glue gun  or use tape.  

We brought the bottles out for 'special times' so they were not out constantly.  When we did bring them out and when we  out we explored alongside our babies so they were not unsupervised.

The types of bottles we made were:

1. Felt pom poms of different sizes

2. Kidney beans

3. Feathers

4. Water, baby oil and food colouring

5. Food colouring, water and glitter

6. Water and petals

Other ideas:

1.  Pieces of tinfoil

2. Buttons

3. Rice (white or coloured)

3. Sand and glitter

4. Water and beads

5. Shave crayons and add to water

6. Tiny animals and hair gel (will be making these)

Do you have any other ideas that you have seen or used?

Posting Posting and more Posting

We both noticed at around 9/10 months old that all 3 babies were BIG into Posting.  They tried to post everything into big boxes.

As a result we decided to set up a POSTING daily discovery.  

Sam was creative and used strips of old fabric she had around the house and decorated a box with wrapping paper. I don't know how she found time with twins!  I think it looks really inviting for children and her twins loved it.

I on the other hand bought my posting box from ELC.  Baby E loves this. My only complaint is that the door does snap shut, however, we haven't had any accidents with it.  There is also a larger hole on the back which is good for differentiation.  Initially E was not able to get it through the small slit at the front so she used the big hole at the back OR opened the door. This has since changed.

For older children this Pop It In The Post game also looks good.

Shiny Happy Babies

Shiny and Bright

Baby E spent over 20 minutes exploring this daily discovery.

She was using all of her senses: staring, touching, turning, tasting and BANGING!