Cultivating Good Habits

It has been 22 months since I became a mother. For the past 1 year plus, I have been making the following 10 things as habits to my son. They include:

1. Clean Hand / Legs

Yes, washing legs cum hands is a must before I bring him to the bed. At this moment, most of the time, we are feeding him and we seldom let him eat by his hands. But soon or later, when he is using his own hands to eat, I will sure enforce him to wash hands before each meal.

2. Regular Sleeping Time

His day nap begins anytime after lunch and last for around 3.5 to 4 hours. His bed time at night usually starts at around 9:45 to 10 pm. I feel bad that we actually have to "wake" him up in the morning at around 7:30 to drop him at my MIL's place. Recently, I realize he actually wakes up at around 8 am during weekend.

3. Fruits

I am a lazy mum, but my MIL and Papa help a lots to enforce this rule, as according to my MIL, ZX eats one apple per day. Normally, we will replace with other types of fruits during weekend to ensure the variety. As I make him to eat on his own with his food (by using fork), he hardly finishes a whole apple now. But no exception, this is part of the learning that he has to make.

4. Say No no to fast food

So far, he recognizes the "Mc" and "K" advertisement, but do not get it wrong, we have never brought him to eat these food. This is because Papa himself eats a lots of these food, he knows that this is not good, since he cannot (will not) change for himself, he wants to make sure that ZX is leading a healthy food diet.Other that the fast food, we are also not giving tibits to ZX thus far. But...but...(Papa, if you are reading this blog, we make exception for CNY, ok? A small quantity is alright for ZX, ok? I do not refer to fast food, but just the NY cookies and/or some sweets?)

5. Looking at the person while you speak

Although ZX has not really speak a full sentence, I always observ and make sure that when he says good-bye to the person, he will look at him or her. I myself feel that this is to show respect to the person whom you are talking to.

6. Sitting while you are eating

I shall admit that this is the hardest rule to enforce simply because toddlers just do not pay attention or rather not show interest to their meal. Whenever we are outside, I will request for baby chair, if we are at home, we normally place him in baby chair as well, otherwise, I will always ask him to sit down so that I can feed him. I am the kind of mother who will not run around simply to feed my child. ;)

7. Drinking Lots of Water

Em...Not sure if this can count, but we always bring water bottle out. Every few hour, I will ask ZX if he wants to drink water or I will simply push the bottle to him to take a few sips. :D

8. Say good night

Before sleeping, I will always ask ZX to say good night to Papa. Last night, he managed to say the word correctly. ;) I would have expected him to say "night night", but in fact, he said: "Papa, good night." :)

10. Say thank you or xie xie

ZX has been giving hand-signal to express his appreciation, kind of confusing me that perhaps I was wrong when I taught him hand signal to express his appreciation during the initial phase when he does not speak. Now that he shall be able to pronounce either word, he just does not want to say that and always replace them by the hand signal. :(

Hope that he can pick up either word and say it nicely soon.

Do you have more good habits to share?