Babies are traditionally called "toddlers" when they start to walk, whether or not they have reached this age.

Babies are the most amazing thing in the world and are a blessing and a miracle.

Babies are particularly good at learning things that are essential for survival, such as recognizing faces or dangerous animals.

Babies are adorable little bundles of joy, except when you're really tired.

The word "infant" comes from the Latin, meaning "unable to speak," but babies are building the foundations for babbling and language before they are born, responding to muffled sounds that travel through amniotic fluid.

Breast fed babies are also thought to regulate their intake by controlling how much milk they take setting up behavioural feeding patterns for later life.

Most babies are fully developed and ready for within one or two weeks of their estimated due date, so a full term pregnancy is defined as anything between 38-42 weeks of gestation.

Today's babies are fatter babies Twenty-two-year study shows that young kids are now more likely to be overweight The number of overweight and at risk for overweight kids are shown in both 1980-81 and 2000-01.

Even though you understand why babies are prone to night waking, you realize it's still important for parents and babies to get a restful night's sleep, otherwise, baby, the parents, and their relationship won't thrive.

As it turns out, most babies are born with blue eyes (perhaps this explains the phrase "baby blues").

Extremely premature babies are often classified as born before 28 weeks-a normal pregnancy lasts 40 weeks.

Although many people would like to think that their babies are bright enough to count before their first birthday, and some child psychologists have suggested they can, that possibility is disputed by the results of a 10-year evaluation by leading scholars at the University of Chicago.

Some babies are even born with a full head of hair. While older babies are considered "cute", newborns can be "unattractive" by the same criteria and first time parents may need to be educated in this regard.

More than half a million babies are born prematurely each year in the United States.

At birth, babies are immune to everything their mothers are, but they have no functional immune system of their own until at 6 weeks the faint stirrings begin. By the time babies are six months old, they will have functional, but still immature, immune systems to help keep them healthy and allergy free.

Children under age 2 and as many as 40 percent of infants under three months are regular watchers of television, DVDs and videos, researchers said. They found that at 3 months, children watched less than an hour per day, but by 24 months, they watched more than 1.

Infants in their first six months can tell the difference between two monkey faces that an older person would say are identical, and they can match calls that monkeys make with pictures of their faces.

As the months pass, parents are able to form deep, affectionate bonds with their babies and marvel at their rapid growth. In the first few months, babies' needs are the highest, but their ability to communicate their needs is the lowest.

In the first three months, tiny babies seldom sleep for more than four-hour stretches without needing a feeding. From three to six months, most babies begin to settle.

Many parents are led to to believe that routine iron supplementation is required for breastfed babies once they reach 6 months of age. Babies obtain the majority of their iron stores from their mothers during the final months of pregnancy. However, it is the ROUTINE supplementation of full term, healthy, breastfed infants at 6 months that many experts are calling into question. For these reasons, many experts now feel that an exclusively breast fed baby receives sufficient iron to keep his levels within the normal range BEYOND the first six months of life.

Parents are the best and first teachers that babies have. Parents have to pay attention to the baby's actions so they can learn the signals.

Tony Harries