Babies at the Crawling stage will amaze you with their sheer strength and energy! Your baby will be on the go, progressing from rolling, to crawling with their tummy off the floor, to pulling themselves up. Once they’ve reached this new milestone of Crawling, you’ll also notice their hand and eye coordination getting better, as they start to feed themselves with their fingers. Their personality is coming out now that they are crawling. Socially, they’ll be very affectionate towards you and people they know and recognise, but they may still be shy with strangers. You may start to hear “mama,” “dada,” and other simple words. At this stage, its important to move your little one onto chunkier textures, to help develop jaw muscles further which is vital for speech development.
Your little one may have started Crawling (with their tummy off the ground) now, and if not, they are well on their way. Their new found mobility means that they will be getting their hands on everything in sight and you’ll probably find little finger prints everywhere! Remember to move precious items up high!
Your little one will now be able to move food side to side with their tongue to their jawline for mashing & chewing.
At this stage its very important your little one begins to experience more texture and biting larger chunks, to really start using those jaw muscles. Chewing helps develop jaw muscles which are vital to babies’ speech development.
Your little one will be mastering self-feeding with their fingers, however not necessarily with a spoon. The pincer grip will allow little one to grab and hold the spoon, but they will be dipping rather than scooping and not necessarily getting the spoon into their mouths. It’s a messy process—and more food may end up on their face, the floor or high chair than in their mouth, but bear with, as practice makes perfect. Our Veggie and Cheesy Straws are perfect to develop the self feeding skills and little ones enjoy the variety, colour and shape.
As well as crawling your little one may even be starting to pull themselves up to stand, and now they are on the move, they will be using more energy. You’ll even see it on their little faces as they concentrate hard on trying to pull themselves up to stand. Their little tummies are too small to get all their energy needs from 3 meals alone (like adults), and that’s why it’s important to supplement meals times with snacks so little one has enough energy to get through the day, ideally without a melt down.
Protein is needed by everyone to maintain and repair the body, but it’s especially important for babies and toddlers because they are growing rapidly and protein supports this growth and development – it’s essential for growing little muscles. At 10 to 12 months, babies can eat the same protein-rich foods as the rest of the family, though they should be soft and cut into small pieces.
