Toothbrushing and Toys

Fun with Sticklebricks

Last week Eve has started enjoying playing 'wibbly lips' as I call it. Not sure if there is a name for this, but do you know what I mean? When you tap your fingers over your lips and make funny sounds. We have fun doing wibbly lips as we walk home from nursery, and I also show her how to make other strange sounds too. Daddy likes doing beat box sounds, which Eve finds most amusing.

Aquafresh toothbrushes for children

We've also finally nailed 'successful' teeth brushing. We've been brushing Eve's teeth since she was about 8 months old. But, the past couple of months have seen her get increasingly cross if we try to brush her teeth. She's so independent now that she likes to try to do most things herself.

As soon as I would put the toothbrush in her mouth she would grab it and start chewing it. If I tried to brush her teeth or prise the brush out of her hand she would go absolutely ballistic. Not what you want after you've trekked across town after work. This also ruined pretty much most of bath time as she would be so upset.

After looking on some forums for ideas, we tried a couple of things, but the one that worked was this; when we get home from nursery I usually give Eve a snack like a banana whilst she watches some tv and I get her bath ready. I've found that if I prep her toothbrush and then wait for a song to come on baby tv and then swoop in to brush her teeth, she is so preoccupied with clapping her hands and enjoying the music that I can give her teeth a really good brush and she will remain happy and calm.

We do this in the morning after breakfast too. It seems that teeth-brushing for the moment will not be taking place in the bathroom. Since working this out brushing Eve's teeth is no longer an upsetting experience for any of us, which is great.

One of the ideas on the forum was to use a children's electric toothbrush as toddlers and children find it more fun. However, the toothbrush heads for adult electric toothbrushes are expensive enough, and when I looked at the prices for children's (which mostly depict Disney characters) they are even more expensive so I decided against that for the time being.

There are all sorts of weird and wacky children's toothbrushes out there - some have lights, others place music, most are brightly coloured. I was lucky to receive quite a few of the free tooth brushes in the bounty packs during pregnancy, which I saved along with many free tubes of children's tooth paste. You can't go wrong with free stuff!

I stopped by 'Little Steps' children's charity shop during one of my lunch breaks last week and was very happy to come away with Loyal Heart Dog - one of the Care Bear Cousins. He is in excellent condition and only cost a mere 50p. Being a kid of the 80's I'm a huge Care Bear fan and have quite a few of the figurines in my collection. But I only ever had one of the plush toys, so I'm pretty happy about this purchase.

I placed Loyal Heart Dog next to Eve's toys so that she would see him when she came down in the morning and she grabbed him straight away and hugged him - such a lovely scene.

Eve loves looking at her little books of colours and sounds. She will bring the book of colours over to one of us to read the colours out to her. As Daddy plays games with her she makes sounds of numbers as they count along together. She's really coming on leaps and bounds at the moment and is constantly asking 'what's this?'