More to worry about

Last weekend we had the pleasure of having lunch with some friends that came to town. Dru and Charity have two little girls, one of which is three days older than Wesley. It was really interesting seeing how developmentally equal they were. How each one was really into books and scribbling with the crayons the restaurant provided. They seemed fascinated looking at each other like "who is this little person that keeps looking at me?".

I had brought some portable snacks for Wesley to eat since I wasn't sure how quickly our food would be served. One of the foods was a fruit cup. We, more often than not, eat fresh fruit or frozen fruit....but on occasion I will break out the portable cups of fruit when we are traveling or otherwise away from home. Charity mentioned that she read an article about the harmful nature of certain plastics. Basically, some plastics that are used for food storage can leach a dangerous chemical known as BPA (Bisphenol A) into the food it is containing. Back when Wesley was still on the bottle I had read up on all of this, this was nothing new but it had been almost a year since I had learned about it. Charity brought up that she doesn't buy the fruit cups because they use the BPA plastic. You can tell this from the recycle code on the bottom of the container. Recycle codes 3, 6 & 7 are dangerous and should be avoided. I'm glad she reminded me of this, we are now back to the basics. We are severely limiting foods from plastic cups and other plastic containers, especially those with 3,6 & 7 on their bottoms.

We were a fairly regular buyer of applesauce in the little cups. This due mainly to time constraints since I do enjoy making my own applesauce. But who has the time? SO today while at the grocery store I was gazing over the organic produce isle and hit the jackpot. They had big bags of organic apples, ten apples to a bag, marked down to $1.25 a bag. They were a bit bruised but perfect for applesauce. So at this precise moment I have a huge pot of apples boiling down to make applesauce. The house smells so good. Yum.
It will be nice to not have to worry about my toddler eating his food laced with questionable chemicals. Scary stuff I tell ya. Thanks for reminding me Charity!

Orangie Lover

A couple of times a week I break out the orangies (mandarin oranges) for dessert and the kid goes nuts. He loves his orangies. He could seriously care less about cookies or cake....but orangies.....Mmmmm orangies.

Blueberries or head injury...you decide.

Lately the kid has taken to squishing blueberries into his forehead during meals. By doing this he covers his head in blueberry juice. By the end of the meal he resembles an Umpa Lumpa or a head trauma victim. It's hard not to laugh at him.

Food, Fun and Farm Boy

For several days now we've been letting Wesley feed himself with a spoon. I say "feed" in the loosest form of the word. He gladly holds the spoon and bangs his tray with it. I then have to hold his little hand (that is holding the spoon) and scoop up food and deliver it to his mouth. He then pulls the spoon out and gives me a giant grin like "see what I just did." It's quite endearing....and messy. I think he's getting the hang of it.

In the terms of what he's eating these days, it's pretty much everything. He has a strange fascination with cottage cheese. Likes to play with it in his mouth, must be the texture. I went all Suzie Homemaker like last weekend and made him some zucchini muffins. I took a normal recipe and added shredded carrot, zucchini (obviously) and cranberries. For the oil I used one part applesauce, one part olive oil and one part regular oil. I substituted the eggs with water, vinegar and baking powder and only used a third of the sugar. And last of all I used whole wheat flour and wheat germ to replace the white flour. Surprisingly enough they were quite tasty and not like bricks which I expected. Wesley likes them too. One other trick I found online is when you feed chunks of banana to your little one just roll it in wheat germ first and it gives a protein and fiber kick to regular naners. It's amazing what you can find online.

This is completely off subject (like most of my posts) but Sean is outside right now in the back yard playing in the dirt on his man toy. He got the Green Machine working and is now trying to fill in the in ground pool. I shall call him Farm Boy. Hmmmm my husband is Farm Boy and my son is Wesley....any guesses what movie I fancy?

The yogurt eater

He does like his yogurt. Blueberry, apple, banana and plain....it's all good.


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On a separate note, our family friend Phil is going in for open heart surgery today....please keep him and his family in your prayers.

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Ramblings

Wesley is finally settling into a nice nap routine. He goes down at 2 pm and sleeps for exactly 2 hours. I love this routine and I hope it doesn't stop. Ever. I have become the most productive person alive during those precious two hours. On Sunday, as soon as he went down, I grabbed the baby monitor, plugged it into the garage electrical outlet and washed and waxed the truck. Yesterday I put him down for his nap and ran into the kitchen and mass produced his whole wheat pumpkin pancakes. I'm still into keeping the freezer overstocked with all of his food so all I do is reach in there and grab something for each meal. He's still getting organic food as much as possible, I've started to incorporate non organic stuff like pasta and meats. But fruits and veggies are all organic. I think it's smart to keep him pesticide and hormone free for as long as possible. He's going to be exposed to all that stuff soon enough.

He's becoming a pro at feeding himself finger foods. You should see the speed in which this child eats green beans. I can hardly place them on the high chair tray before they're gone. So far he's getting:
-Cheerios
-mini meatballs
-green beans
-pasta of all shapes and sizes
-sweet potato cubes
-pancakes
-applesauce
-naners
-shredded chicken
-beans and lentils
-peas
-blueberries
-cubes of carrots and potato
-melon or any sort

I'm trying to add more food into his diet whenever I can. I think we are going to start him in shredded cheese and yogurt next month or just hold off until a year. My friend Jessica's little boy has a milk allergy which scares me from letting Wesley have full milk products just yet, even though he's getting formula which is made from cow's milk.

I forgot how easy is was to use the jarred baby food. With my sister's wedding this coming weekend, I am wishing he was still eating the jarred stuff that I can just toss in the diaper bag. I now have all this freezer food that I'm going to have to lug around in a cooler. Luckily the hotel room as a mini fridge so I can just keep it all in there and portion out servings for eat meal, wherever we happen to be. I also wasn't sure it all the locations (rehearsal dinner, reception) would have highchairs so I bought a clip on chair we can carry with us. I hope it works. I hope the kid doesn't fall off the table.

Holy Cow.....

....this kid can eat! Tonight for dinner he had three meatballs, half a cup of green beans, two cubes of sweet potatoes, some chopped up spaghetti, half a banana, two cubes of applesauce and a hand full of cheerios for good measure. Can we say Jabba the Hutt? The kid is going to eat me out of house and home.

Changes

When I was still childless I always thought a kid could sit by themselves and play....entertain themselves. Boy was I in for a wake up call. My little man couldn't just sit somewhere and play with his toys or books without me or Sean being less than 5 feet away. Well, he finally hit the magic age when he'll sit and play with is toys by himself, and I might add it's WONDERFUL! I'll plop him down on the living room floor with toys all around and he'll just play and amuse himself for half an hour. Get this: I was able to make dinner last night while he was in the living room. That might not sound like much, but it's a huge step to our lives becoming normal again. I know once he becomes mobile it will be a whole different story but for now I'm enjoying the things the way they are.

His appetite is changing as well. He's nearly off of strained baby food. I haven't bought little jars of baby food in awhile now. He's still getting his food mashed or slightly blended because of the whole lack of teeth thing but the watery food is a thing of the past. We are trying all sorts of new food lately. Still haven't come across anything he just flat out won't eat. He's been getting a variety of beans mixed with chicken for dinner the past two nights, let's just say beans work on him the way beans work on all of us. It's been like a little band in his pants every evening. Funny stuff. My parents got us a little blender of sorts, it's similar to the Magic Bullet and I can just throw all of his food in it and blend it up in a couple of seconds. It works like a champ. I've been blending up our dinners if it is something I feel he can have yet. It is so nice to have him eating what we're eating while we all sit at the dinner table. It's a good feeling.

His dexterity is getting better every day. Lately he's been trying to throw balls. He'll pick up these little palm sized balls and crank his little arm back and try and launch it and it usually falls backwards. Then he looks around like "Where did it go?" It cracks me up. He's still not crawling or trying to pull up on anything. Just doesn't seem interested. He will pull up on your hands if you stick them in front of him but that's it. I think he's going to skip crawling all together.
That's all for now.

Noodle Man

I am constantly on the look out for perfect little finger foods for Wesley to try and I came across some little star pasta. This stuff is wonderful! It's full of protein and it's the perfect little tiny size. I cook up a couple of cups of the stuff and put it in ice cube trays with a little water. Then I can defrost a cube for dinner and mix it with squash or sweet potato. We had fun last night with the noodles, he decorated the bottom part of his face and I decorated the top half.

Our little foodie

We are venturing into the land of finger foods. Wesley can pick the food up off his high chair tray but won't put it in his mouth. He's quite content to have me place the food in his open mouth though. He loves the little Gerber Banana puffs, noodles and little chunks of banana. This weekend I'm going to cook up some little pieces of carrots, potato, chicken and noodles in veggie stock and see if he'll eat that. We've mastered every fruit and veggie puree I can think of. He likes everything....even the previously putrid green beans he'll happily swallow down now. At almost nine months his daily menu is: at breakfast he'll have three freezer cubes of applesauce with half a banana and oatmeal all thrown in the little blender, lunch is a cube of sweet tators, applesauce, butternut squash, other half of banana all blended, dinner is a jar of chicken or turkey stew, veggie and container of pears if still hungry. I'm hoping by 11 months he's eating whatever we're eating. We'll be holding off on strawberries (berries in general), egg, citrus, tomatoes, cow milk, peanuts and honey until he's one year old. It's a lot of fun introducing him to the glorious wide world of food.

Life on the homefront

After weeks of refusing to sleep in his crib for a nap....I have achieved victory! Wesley is sleeping in his crib as I type. It is wonderful. Every time his head hit the mattress in the crib he would scream like crazy so I would just pick him up put him in his stroller and go for a walk. He'd sleep, life is good. Well I knew this would work until our first rainy day. Today it poured. So today I put him in his crib at nap time, he screamed, I sang to him, he screamed even louder, I sang even louder....then he passed out after 8 minutes of this. Victory is mine. I've decided it is so hard to not nurse a child to sleep.

In the eating department Wesley is moving on up the food chain. He's been trying chicken for almost a week now. Seems to like it alright. He tried some noodles today, yum yum. Still can't figure out how to feed himself but I assume that will happen in its own time. I find myself eating his baby food more and more often. When I get into the freezer to get a few cubes of frozen applesauce or sweet potato for Wesley I also grab a few for me. Homemade applesauce is so good. I roasted butternut squash last week for the first time. I'm learning how to cook up all sorts of stuff for Wesley that I've never made before. Quite a learning experience.

Adventures in Baby Food

Sunday I spent several hours making Wesley his homemade organic baby food. It took about three hours from start to finish and it made one heck of a mess, but it was fun. I used the book Blender Baby Food, it gives instructions and cooking times for everything...made it all very simple. It was interesting to note that each grouping of veggies only made one ice cube tray of food, for example four pears made one tray, four apples one tray....they don't go too far once they are cooked down. One ice cube tray makes 16 cubes and he eats three-four cubes a day. After doing the math it is actually cheaper to make your own baby food by about .50 a day verses buying the jarred organic baby food, plus it is healthier and satisfying knowing he's getting fresh stuff. I labeled them and put them in freezer bags, now I just pop cubes in a bowl and microwave them. Pretty cool.

During my countless hours of web surfing I found this neat item called a Sassy Self Feeder. It is a little mesh bag with a handle that you can put chunks of food in and let your little one gum the food through the mesh bag. This way Wes can have whole foods without the possibility of choking. We've tried a chunk of banana in it and he spent about 20 minutes sucking on it before he chucked it over the side of his high chair. I'm going to try peaches in it next.

Adventures in green beans

The saga continues.....

Ok, I've had my banana's. Life is good. What are you gonna feed me next?

Wait just a minute...this is NOT banana's!!

Oh my gosh are you trying to poison me?!

Is this dog food? This can't be baby food.

No more of this stuff. Ever. I plead with you, for the love of pity, spare me green beans forever more.

Tasty Veggies

Wesley has been eating rice cereal for almost three weeks now and is getting bored so we started carrots last Friday. Man, he likes carrots. We were given a high chair while visiting for Christmas so now he's not eating in his stroller anymore which is nice. We call him our little T-Rex, he opens his mouth and makes a roaring noise while launching himself at the spoon full of pureed carrots. Pretty funny stuff.

Down the hatch

Wesley has let us know over the past few weeks that it is time he needs more than just breast milk. Every time we eat something in front of him his eyes get really wide and he makes these hilarious grunting noises. I thought we could get closer to the six month mark but I decided this evening it was time. I've had the rice cereal in the cabinet and those special little rubber covered spoons in the drawer for a few weeks now. Well, it went ok.....a picture (or two) are worth a thousand words.....

.....BEFORE eating......


.......AFTER eating......

Enough said. We'll be trying again tomorrow....and yes, he's in his stroller... we need a high chair.