The ancient Hebrew scholars taught parents to bake cakes in the form of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet which the child has to identify before he was allowed to eat the cake.

<Glenn Doman on teaching really small children to read at an early age>

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More on kids

• Kids, peanuts and liver cancer
• Getting kids to appreciate more complex flavors
• Homemade soy milk: Schools to feed the kids something else rather than milk?
• Beautiful home made Bento box meals

I added just a bit of dehydrated raw wheat grass powder in my plain water today. My almost 5 (so he says) year old rugrat took a sip and said, “Hmmm, this is good tea Mummy”. This is excellent because it means his taste buds are starting to appreciate more complex flavors.

ften times, we don’t know what they like. So it’s always good to keep introducing new food to them every once in a while.

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More on healing raw food

• Malaysian raw food product
• How virgin coconut oil is made
• Guava As Medicine

I brought out my very accurate weighing machine an hour earlier to weigh myself, which I haven’t done in two months. And guess what? I gained 7 pounds! That’s 3 kilos more for you guys who read metric.

7 pounds! That’s a lot.

I’ll tell you why I gained that much. I stopped breastfeeding 4 months ago. To tell you the truth, I’ve been breastfeeding almost a total of 4 years. I stopped each child when he was almost 2.

John at 6 months

Ethan, almost 2

And when I breastfed, weight just peeled off me. Just like that.

I never thought I’d be breastfeeding so long. Really. I thought, 4 months tops per kid. But I found that once I went past the nipple pain (too much info?), mastitis and the need to sleep 24/7, I found it such a relaxing moment to breast feed. Just me and the baby, and some peace and quiet.

If you ever want an almost fool proof diet program to get rid of your baby fat. Try this. And don’t do what I do know, which is still eating for two despite not doing so. Fast track to being over weight.

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More about babies

• Adrian’s Baby Full Moon Celebration
• Mine is bigger than yours

This is how some of the UHT milk packets look like

I was thinking of how schools were given UHT packets of spoilt milk last year, thinking why was this happening. Milk is truly expensive in a country mainly exports it’s dairy products from Europe, Australia and New Zealand. The act of packing the milk in pricey UHT packages. The cost of transporting milk from packing factories to schools.

There are food just as good or better than dairy milk, and cheaper to boot too.

Why not make soy bean milk, barley water or red bean drinks instead for kids from poor families? Low cost, easy-to-make, full of protein and other minerals, filling, FRESHly made. Pay the canteen operator and skip the middle men who makes all the profit from distributing milk.

Just soak the beans overnight, dunk the beans into soy milk machine with water, sugar N pandan leaf. Fresh food in 1/2 hour.

While we are on the subject of healthy school food, why not ban sugary soda drinks like Coca-Cola, Pepsi and all those artificial drinks, hook up a water cooler machine and sell healthy drinks instead to kids and teens.

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More on school and food

• Mothers Cook Healthy Meals For Students
• Edible food colors for kiddo finger painting sessions
• Beautiful home made Bento box meals for school kids
• Regular bread is full of additives
• Is food making school kids crazy?
• Raw anise seeds, full of iron. Good for kids
• School shoes stink to high heaven?

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I was at MidValley MegaMall today (a busy and huge shopping mall) when I saw a 6 month old little girl. She was so small compared to my 2nd son (DS2), also 6 months old. In fact, my baby is about double her size.

I had painful memories while looking at her built because my 1st son (DS1) was also small. In fact, he is still small in stature, but picking up in speed now in terms of growth.

I kinda blame myself for DS1’s size because I didn’t eat that much when I was pregnant. I just ate what I thought was ok, so long as it was healthy, organic food. I ate the same way when I was breastfeeding as well. I realise thereafter, it was not ok because he was born just barely 2.2kg. And continued to be small in size.

We, pregnant women, need to eat a lot for our babies to grow big. Ditto if we are breastfeeding. When DS2 was born, I was determined to do it right the second time around. So, I ate bars of cream cheese with crackers, lots of nourishing coconut, lots of protein, lots of water, lots of fruits, lots of nuts, lots of everything. My criteria was, the food had to be tasty to give me more appetite to eat, not like my previous efforts where I ate lots of organic but not so tasty food. The result? DS2 at 6 months old is bigger than most kids his age.

Despite eating for 2, was I fat? Nah. Ask my friends

Breastfeeding just melts away the fat, unless you are Salma Hayek, who complained she could not shake the weight off. Hmmmm.

ps Go ahead and email me, all you pregnant mums, breastfeeding mums who need comfort and support.

pps forward this message to your pregnant friends or breastfeeding friends or even husbands of these ladies, if you think it would interest them.

ppps in case you didn’t know, DS1 means Dear Son No 1, DS2 means Dear Son No 2