anZel/Arden

Archive for the ‘Books’ Category

two book worms

Signing to anZel

Being the over-achieving parents that we are, we started signing to anZel a couple of weeks ago.

According to some of the researchers, infants generally have no long term memory until they are five to six months old. That’s why at around 6 months it’s best time to start signing with babies. However, we’ve seen cases where infants starting signing back at four months!!

Not that we really expect anZel to sign back at 3-4 months, but the lil guy loves watching hand gestures. When I do the airplane sign to him, he watches very closely and follows my hand as it moves.

We bought a couple books from Amazon to give us an idea what to do..

We have also been using using these two sites to teach us signs that the books don’t teach us:

• ASL Pro
• ASL Browser

The only thing is that for some reason, some of the same words have different signs from these two sites. I have no idea why…maybe some ASL expert can explain that to me..

Doula Recommendations

Our doula just recommended the following:

1. Drink Rasperry leaf tea to tone the uterus

2. The Thinking Woman’s Guide to a Better Birth.

3. Follow Me Mum DVD

Secrets of the Baby Whisperer

[Update: I found out that the author of this book has forged many of her credentials, including her degree and work experience. Apparently her recommendations are not supported by aap.org and many pediatricians. So this book is now moved to rejects.]

Have been soooo busy late work lately it’s unbelievable. Haven’t had much time at all to do any type of resarch for anZel, either reading or checking out equipment.

A good friend of ours gave us a stack of books to read. One of them is

I started it reading it with the few spare moments I had before bedtime and have found it to be tremendously helpful (even though I have no anZel to whisper to yet.)

I very much agree with many of the things that Tracy Hogg said in the books, such as her E.A.S.Y routine.

Also learned a lot on breastfeeding (not that I will be doing it) and baby’s behavior, etc.

A lot of what’s in there may seem common sense but I’ve seen enough parents/kids not able to do what the book says.

Haven’t finished it yet but I’ve already learned alot from it. Will post more thoughts here later.

But if you haven’t read it yet, it’s definitely worth picking up a copy and go through.

Harvard Girl Liu Yiting

Started reading this book a couple of days ago. It’s very similar to the Carl Walter books about early child education. In fact, the mother of Liu Yiting was inspired by the The education of Karl Witte.

The Karl Witte book is an out-of-print book, even on Amazon! And the used ones are like $174!!

The ones (there appear to be multiple Carl Witte books in Chinese, partly because I think the Chinese publishers are trying to make $$ so coming out with multiple pretty-much-the-same books) that I’ve read are all Chinese versions.

If you have the opportunity to read this original book, definitely do so. It’s very much worth it!