Yesterday Wade laid on the changing table, looked up at me and said, “Ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma. Mama!”
Yep. His first word. And I even have witnesses.
“Mama!”
I knew he liked me best.
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From the category archives:
baby
Does the world really need another tutorial showing you how to make your own baby food?
No.
It does not.
There’s a million fabulous ones online already. Complete with recipes. Though it’s a little beyond me why you need a recipe to make a single ingredient dish.
But then again there are people like the rich women from Chicago who used to ask me how to cook noodles when I worked at the Amish noodle factory in Shipshewana the summer before college. They honestly didn’t know you just put them in boiling water.
The Amish noodle factory in Shipshewana is a whole other story. Perhaps I will tell it one day. And no I am not, nor have I ever been Amish, or even Mennonite for that matter.
But I’m curious. If you’ve heard of or been to Shipshewana, IN, tell me in the comments. It’s quiet possibly the most famous little town in the world.
Back to baby food.
I just thought I’d tell you what I spent an afternoon doing. I’m a little proud of the fact that I shun jarred baby food, and make my own.
Yes, pride goeth before a fall, but this is where I make up my guilt over not breastfeeding.
So just let me have this, m’ kay?
Just in case you really have no idea how to go about making baby food, here are the directions.
Get some veggies. Since this is for baby I prefer organic. Fresh is best, but for out of season veg, frozen is just fine. Do not used canned. Please.
Steam them on the stove. Not the microwave. The microwave, for reasons I do not fully understand, removes all the nutrients. Boiling removes a lot of them.
O.K. Now, I am going to show you how to rig up your own steamer if you don’t have the real thing. It’s simple, and you’ve got to have something in your kitchen you can use.
I use my large stock put and two ceramic casserole dishes, one slightly larger that the other. In the stock place the large casserole on the the bottom, upside down.
Place the smaller casserole right side up on top of the larger one.
Pour a few inches of water in the bottom of the stock pot. Dump your veggies in the small casserole. If you’re cooking something hard like carrots, cut them into small chunks first. They’ll cook faster. Put the lid on the pot.
Bring water to a boil, then reduce to a simmer.
I can not take credit for this cobbled together steamer. I saw Alton Brown do it on Good Eats.
Veggies are ready when they are fork tender or squish easily. Different veggies need different cooking times, so check for doneness.
So once the veg is cooked, take it out and pulverize it.
It’s easiest done in a food processor, but if you don’t have one a food mill, ricer or even a vigorous workout with a potato masher will do the trick on most foods.
The key is make a lot so that you’re not steaming a small portion for every meal. When the veg is all mashed, dish it out into ice cube trays. Cover with plastic wrap and freeze. Each cubby in the average ice cube tray holds about an ounce which is equal to one serving size of baby food.
Once the cubes of food are frozen solid you can take them out of the trays and store them in little freezer bags or in a large container separated with some wax paper so they don’t stick together.
When baby is ready to eat, grab a cube out of the fridge. You can employ the microwave to defrost since it’s not in there long enough to remove the nutrients. About 30 seconds on the regular setting in my microwave leaves the food at room temperature, just right for little ones to eat.
Of course you can cook hard fruits like pears and apples this way too.
Making your own baby food is really a no brainer. And it doesn’t take that much time. It’s also economical.
I paid $1.59 for a bag of organic carrots. It made 21 servings. Purchasing 21 jars of the least expensive baby food I could find in my local stores would have cost me 7.14. So I think it was worth the small effort.
And It’s kind of fun. At least for me since I like to cook.
Unfortunately there’s no guarantee baby will like your cooking.
Just look at Wade’s face after his first bite of carrot.
His expression says everything.
It seems carrots are not a favorite of his.
He did however like the peas.
And in that he does not take after his mother.
At 34, I still don’t eat my peas.
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I got up this morning, and took Wade to the doctor for his six month check-up. And you know us. No day that includes a trip to the doctor can every be dull day here.
I always schedule these things for the morning, because at the time it seems like a good idea to get get it over and done with first thing. Then when the day actually comes, and I’m running around to trying to get everybody up and dressed and going, I end up regretting it.
I really needed a shower this morning, but weighed that against my need to have enough time to drive-thru McDonalds for a Non-fat, Sugar-Free Vanilla Latte on the way.
The caffeine won out.
My hair was a mess, but missing out on my morning coffee is way worse than a bad hair day.
F.Y.I McDonalds, you might want to teach your employees the difference between a quarter and a gold dollar. I got an extra .75 cents back today.
The doctor is 45 minutes away. I don’t think we could ever find a better pediatrician, so we still see one in Grand Rapids even though we moved three years ago. It’s totally worth the drive. And it was a nice drive since I had my latte to sip.
Wade weighed in at 17 lbs. 3 oz. and is 27 inches long. He’s in the 50th percentile still. He’s not going to be huge like his older brother David.
After the nurse weighed Wade (Ha, ha — weighed, wade — it sounds the same. I’m easily amused.), and we were back in the room waiting for the doctor, I decided to change his diaper since his clothes were off already. I got the wet diaper off, and the clean one under him. Then while I was fiddling with a particularly stubborn tab that was stuck, Waded peed.
Without the diaper secured in place it went everywhere.
All over Wade.
All over the paper table liner.
All over the table.
Thankfully that paper liner is pretty absorbent, and I had a lot of baby wipes with me. I got it all cleaned up just before the doctor came in.
The exam reveled that Wade is normal and healthy and growing fine.
Poor Wade. Things got real bad for him after the doctor left.
The nurse came in to give him four shots, and an oral vaccine.
You’ll never guess what one of the shots was.
H1N1.
It’s a little late for that one.
After that nasty tasting stuff, and all those pokes, Wade was mad. I’ve never seen him that mad. It took a good 10 minutes to settle him down enough to put him in the car seat, so we could get out of there.
Too anyone who heard me singing You Are My Sunshine off key in the exam room, I’m sorry, but it always calms him down.
You probably didn’t hear me though over Wade’s screams.
Now Wade has a fever. He’s had a fever after each vaccination so far. With five today, I’m not surprised that he’s especially miserable.
Wade needed a lot of cuddling and holding tonight. He’s finally asleep in his bed now.
We’ll see how long that last.
I think it might be a long night.
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Well, I feel a little better today than yesterday. I was tired, and everything, even housework seems insurmountable when you’re tired.
I really think I could get myself a bit more organized, and caught up on things if I could just get Wade to sleep through the night.
I was spoiled by David who’s gone to bed consistently at 8:30 every night almost since the day he was born, and started sleeping through the night at four months.
I don’t remember really doing anything special to help David accomplish that. I simply followed his cues, and he put himself on a schedule.
If David cried I feed him. If he yawned and rubbed his eyes, I laid him down. He was hungry every four hours on the dot every day. His appetite was hardy, and it wasn’t long before he ate enough during the day to sleep through the night. About the same time David started sleeping thought he night, he started napping at regular intervals as well.
I laid David down one evening a few days after he turned four months old, and woke up to his cries the next morning at 6:30 feeling unusually rested. It took me a few minutes to comprehend what happened. I looked at the clock, and realized I hadn’t made my routine 3 a.m. visit to his room with bottle in hand. He slept 10 hours straight that night, and has every night since.
Wade on the other hand is consistent only in that he is completely inconsistent.
I’ve been using the same strategy with Wade, but his cues are all over the place. One day he eats every three hours, another day it’s every five hours, another day it’s every four, then it’s back to every three. Sometimes he naps for a long time in the morning, sometimes it’s a long time in the afternoon. One night he’s up until 9, the next he’s out at 6.
Yesterday Wade ate every four hours, and finished off the bottles. He actually slept for a solid six hours, from 12:30 to 6:30 a.m. He did great again today until he fell asleep at 5:30, while we were eating dinner. So tonight I broke a cardinal rule of mine. I woke up Wade, who was sound asleep, at 7:30 to feed him.
I usually say let sleeping babies lie, but I’m ready to do anything to get Wade on a schedule, and sleeping through the night. It’s been a long six months, and I want to sleep again.
He’s back to sleep now, and if I need to I’m going to wake him one more time to feed him at 11:30.
We’ll see if this works.
How did you get your kids on a schedule and sleeping through the night?
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For the most part Wade is sleeping better at night. He still wakes up to eat a couple times, but he goes back to sleep quickly. And I am starting to feel human again.
But Wade doesn’t do anything on any kind of regular schedule.
One night he’s up at 1 and 4, another he goes to sleep at 8 and is up at 11 and 3. Sometimes he naps all afternoon and is awake all evening. Other days he naps through breakfast and lunch and is awake all afternoon. Some days Wade eats three ounces every three hours, other days five ounces every four hours. And once in a while he’ll gulp down six.
I remember David was easy to get on a schedule. Almost from the day we brought him home from the hospital he ate, slept and even dirtied his diapers at the same time every day. He was also noisy and energetic from day one, never quiet or sitting still. And he’s pretty much the same way at four years old.
Wade seems to be more of the strong, silent type, and I think he’s going to be totally disorganized when he’s older.
Now I’m not a stickler for putting baby on a schedule. I’m a proponent of letting baby eat when he’s hungry, sleep when he’s tired. You won’t find me waking up a snoozing infant just because he has to eat at noon every day. In fact, my motto is, “Let Sleeping Babies Lie.” But usually if you let baby do what he wants, when he wants long enough, he’ll put himself on a schedule.
I’m not sure Wade will ever do that on his own. It think he may need some encouragement along the way. And not knowing when he’s going to do what makes it hard to plan my days. I need some kind of structure in this household just to stay sane, and so does his older brother David.
Needing a refresher course after four years, I dug out my What to Expect the First Years book to look up advice about getting babies on a schedule. The What to Expect series was a huge help to me as a first time mom who was completely clueless when it came to child birthing and rearing.
Going through the list of types of babies in the book David’s was first , The Active Baby. I read through the others, and it wasn’t difficult to see that Wade fit the description of The Irregular Baby. My first thought was that it sounds like a shirt that you buy at the GAP factory outlet store.
What’s the exchange policy on that? I mean, I didn’t know I was getting an irregular baby when I put in my order.
But I’ve invested a lot of time and love already. I’d prefer to keep him. Is there an upgrade I can download to fix the bugs? Wade 2.0 0r something?
No. It seems I’m going to have to do the reprogramming myself.
The book suggests implementing a routine as best I can in spite of his irregularity. It says to try and stretch out the feedings a bit at a time, stimulate to him to keep him awake. But for the most part, as I suspected, it’s up to Wade.
And I’m just going to have to keep being flexible and patient.
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