[598 Mothers’ remedies]

Schedule for three-year-old child.

7:30 a. m.—­Cereal well cooked (over night) or at least for three hours, A larger variety of food can now be given and given as before with thin cream, salt, but little sugar.  One glass of warm milk, a soft boiled, coddled or poached egg; bread very stale or dry, one slice with butter.

10:00 a. m.—­One cup of warm milk, with a cracker or a piece of stale bread and butter.

2:00 p. m.—­Soup, four ounces, or two ounces of beef juice.  Meat:  chop, steak, roast beef, lamb or chicken; white potato, baked or boiled rice.  Green vegetables:  Tips of asparagus, string beans, peas, spinach, all cooked until they are very soft, mashed or preferably put through a sieve, and only one to two teaspoonfuls at first.  Desserts:  Cooked fruit, baked or stewed apple, stewed prunes, water, but no milk.

6:00 p. m.—­Cereal:  Farina, cream of wheat, or arrow-root, cooked for at least one-half hour with plenty of salt, but no sugar; or milk toast; or old bread and milk or stale or dry bread and butter and a glass of milk.

BABY’S SECOND SUMMER.

Nearly all mothers dread baby’s second summer.  If the baby is born at such a time that he cuts his double teeth during the hot weather, and if it is attended by indigestion and fever, there is really some cause for worry, because the digestive organs during the hot weather are more difficult to manage than during the colder months; otherwise, if you feed your baby carefully and properly, and with the regularity that you did in the early months, there is no reason to dread the second summer, Mistakes are made by mothers and grandparents especially.  They permit the child to come to the table and eat of the food prepared for adults.  Sometimes it is only a little, but that little will gradually grow larger; and even that little may be enough to upset baby for weeks and then the illness that follows is in reality due to the parents’ own foolishness when it is laid to the credit of the second summer, or regarded as “a mysterious dispensation of Providence.”  Do not give anything to baby between its regular meals but water; crackers, zwieback, and bread are prohibited between.

DIET OF OLDER CHILDREN-FOURTH TO TENTH YEAR.

Give the largest meal at midday and a light supper at night, very much like that recommended for the third year.  For a few years you can give milk once between breakfast and dinner, or dinner and supper, and permit no other food between meals, but give water freely.

[All about baby 599]

MILK AND CREAM.

What part of the diet should milk form now?  Nothing can take its place, and it should be an important part of the diet.  Most children can take and digest milk.