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Essentials for baby from six to twelve months

Last week we covered baby essentials for the first six months and today we’re going to cover the next six months. A few things will have changed in your peaceful, quiet home… You will have a baby that screeches on and off a lot, they just love the sound of their own voice once they hit the five/six month mark.

They’ll also be moving about, rolling or crawling maybe, trying to sit up or will have mastered sitting up. Either way frustration will be setting in, they’ll be dying to do the next thing and getting cranky and frustrated when they fall over or can’t roll back. So the range of toys and props you have around the house need to change first of all…

I had what I call a “Doughnut sit up yoke” for a few months, I think she used it from about five until eight months. It’s actually a play nest… Here is the one I had, she was so happy to just sit there or lie as you can see and it worked a charm until she threw herself out of it one day.

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Which is where your stationary entertainer or jumperoo come in – you’ll find these on adverts.ie all the time for great prices but if you wanted to buy new Smyths have them reduced at the moment.

 

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We had this one which is a saucer entertainer, she absolutely loved it up until about 12 months.

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You’ll be weaning so a good hand blender is essential – believe me you don’t want to be mashing all day or trying to get your pear smooth enough by pushing it through a sieve.

Good pots for freezing and feeding are really important, I used a few ones, the Tommee Tippee ones that are on offer in Aldi every now and again, the Vital baby ones, some great Tomy ones that I use myself for my breakfast in work. Spoons, I find the Nuby or Ikea ones are brilliant and the Tommee Tippee sippy cups are great! Some weaning tips here

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On this note a high chair is a new necessity as well, I have three now at the moment – a Stokke Tripp Trapp, an Ikea Antelop and a Summer booster seat. One at home, one in my parents and one in the childminders. You may not know but these are one end of the scale to the other, the Tripp Trapp was a very generous gift from some friends and I love how it looks and it’s functionality but I am not a fan of the lack of a tray on it. The Ikea one is brilliant, for €20 you really cannot go wrong and it’s so easy to keep clean. The booster seat is great from about 9 months and fits neatly onto a kitchen chair.

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I’m putting a play pen in at this stage as well, even though to be honest Ruby never liked it and I rarely used it but I know some friends who absolutely loved theirs and kids who loved them too.

Teething has kicked in big style, get your hands on Sophie la Giraffe, some calgel (smuggled in from the UK) and there are other tips here and of course our bibs are amazeballs for soaking up the drool and cutting back on the amount of bibs you’ll be washing!

At this stage I was using my Connecta alll the time and absolutely loved the flexibility of babywearing especially when doing things like grocery shopping when she was too small to sit in the trolley and too big for lying back in the infant seat. I got mine on koalacubs.ie but as I have mentioned before do join the Babywearing Ireland page on Facebook.

Lastly back to toys, Ruby got this for her first birthday and she adores it, it would have been a fantastic toy to have from earlier and I know countless friends who rave about it even now – the Little Tikes Activity Garden.

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So what have I missed?