It can be a pretty stressful experience, for all parties involved. Your toddler’s first haircut. Where and when? Here’s what we did -

My husband recently trimmed my sixteen-month-old daughter’s hair. She was beginning to look a bit feral, kind of like Mowgli the jungle boy, with a fuzzy back bit and a draping fringe that was most certainly vision impairing.

You may have noticed that I said that my husband cut my daughter’s hair.

I am horribly useless at all things hair and scissors – I once trimmed my husband’s hair on his insistence and a colleague at work called him Mushroom-head, which of course I found quite hysterical but he certainly did not.

The point: he was not about to inflict me on the hair of our little lovely.

You may be wondering why we didn’t just take Amelia to the hairdresser… well, sitting still is not my daughter’s strongest point (as is true for all toddlers I am sure) so I thought it’d be easier to sit her in front of Tinga Tinga Tales and let hubby do the job. Which worked really well for us.

If you feel that your child is going to be anxious about the big shiny scissors; entering a strange, funny-smelling environment; getting teased and cooed over by everyone there; climbing into a large, odd-looking chair; and being wetted down and wrapped in plastic capes, then home-styling is definitely a great way to go.

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As parents, we try our best to feed our children healthy foods. Now here’s some sensible eating advice for kids.

Even those of us (myself included) who aren’t expert chefs can usually rustle up some veggies and fish, a healthy sandwich and the occasional fruit-loaded smoothie, but while most of us probably struggle to keep our kids away from the biscuit barrel, it is possible to give kids a diet that is ‘too healthy’.

In the 1980s, the phrase ‘muesli belt malnutrition’ was coined to describe the culture of excessive ‘healthy eating’ leading to vitamin and mineral deficiencies.

In these days of über-parenting, where biscuits have been replaced with rice crackers and snack packs are likely to be filled with vegetable and salad sticks that take almost as much energy to digest as they actually provide, it’s possible that a similar phenomenon could develop in our children.

A recent survey has shown that some childcare institutions in England provide too many portions of fruit and veg and not enough in the way of carbohydrates.

The report also highlighted the tendency of nurseries and parents to opt for low-fat options as a way of avoiding obesity.

The problem is that children’s dietary requirements are very different from our own: active, growing children have high calorific needs: up to 40% of daily calories for under 3s should come from fats and up to 65% from carbohydrates.

Consequently, a diet that contains too many low-fat, low-carb, high-fibre foods – such as fruit and vegetables – is not optimal for a growing child.

Low-fat dairy products such as skimmed milk are not suitable for children under 5, and semi-skimmed milk is not suitable for children under 2, because the fat content is not sufficient.

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I always thought that the whole baby first word thing would be this obvious moment where my little lovely would articulate “mummy” or “daddy” in a voice as clear as a bell. Apparently that is not the case – with my child at least.

At 16-months-old, my daughter says a couple of things (I think); Tigger sounds like “tidd-u”, circle sounds like “sick-u”, yay miraculously sounds like “yay” and daddy is “da-da”.

She says “ma-ma” but in relation to pretty much anything, including the window, the computer and her food.

She roars like a lion when she hears the word “lion” but also when just about any other animal enters her field of vision, and she can “sss” like a snake.

Recently she spent the whole day saying what sounded like “stick-um” – Me: “Amelia, don’t touch that”, Amelia in response: “stick-um”; Me: “Amelia, would you like some milk?”, Amelia: “stick-um”; Me: “Amelia, it’s time for lunch”, Amelia: “Stick-um! Stick-um! Stick-um!” ….I have no explanation.

Although my daughter doesn’t say much – well actually, she says a lot but I have no idea what 90 per cent of it means – she certainly understands a great deal.

BabyCenter.com says that between the ages of 19 to 24 months, although a baby will probably only say about 50 to 70 words, he or she may understand as many as 200 words, many of which are nouns.

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I have been making home-made food for my 16-month-old daughter since she started solids at four months.

And the reason I haven’t given up is because I cook in bulk and freeze en masse.

Home cooking is proper hard work and is definitely time consuming but I am dedicated to it, and have managed to keep my sanity by having meals on tap that are ready to eat after only a few seconds in the microwave.

But, is it safe to defrost baby food?

Defrosting food is perfectly safe as long as it is done correctly. Expert nutritionist Carole Bunker from Prima Baby & Pregnancy offers some handy tips for cooking, freezing and defrosting meals:

* Ensure that everything used for preparing and storing the food is cleaned thoroughly.

* Once cooked, cool food as quickly as possible before storing it single-meal sized portions.

* Aim to use the food within two to three months – labelling it with the date it was made will help.

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I started making smoothies for myself and my husband BC (before children) when we were working hard to renovate our house and living on takeaways, due to either lack of time or lack of kitchen!

I decided that if we could at least start the day with a few portions of fruit, we wouldn’t have to feel so guilty about alternating between pizza, curry and the chip shop in the evening.

Fast forward a few years and the smoothie has come into its own again as a great way of how to get kids to eat fruit.

The only difference now is that a growing family brings with it extra food and an abundance of plastic cups, pots and plates, meaning that kitchen space is somewhat limited compared with previous child-free days.

As a result, the all-singing, all-dancing multipurpose food processor is now stuck in repose behind several lunch boxes and an Annabel Karmel hand blender.

So I was really pleased to stumble on the Indulgence Mini Smoothie Maker MIMS10, available through Amazon, which fits neatly under my wall units when it’s in use and takes up very little cupboard space when it’s not.

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