Sweeeeeeet Potatoes

First taste of veggies today - sweet potato! Well, technically, a yam, but either way, JJ was loving it and has the spoon thing down pat.

We decided to make our own baby food, so we had to do a bit more with this one (bananas are just mashable) To prepare it, John baked the yam, pureed it with some water, and froze all the extra in ice cube trays for later. Pretty cool (no brown sugar or marshmellows, before you ask ;)). He made some bannana cubes too so we're starting to get a stock of baby food laid by.

Why make our own baby food? Good question. Our reasons are:

• Cost - baby food is largely water. It is way cheaper to by an extra fruit/veggie/etc., cook it with our own meal without spices/salt, and run it through the blender, than to pay someone else to give us 1/8 as much food for 5 times the price.
• Contents - no preservatives or any fillers in homemade food. We know exactly what is in it.
• Organic - we want to minimize his pesticide exposure at this age.
• Environment - sure the little jars are cute, but that's extra packaging that has to be recycled or buried.

It's really easy for us since we a) love cooking and b)have a chest freezer. For recipes, we've got Super Baby Food by Ruth Yaron (pretty good, but she tends to mix opinion and research rather freely - a chronic baby book issue), and I want to get William's Sonoma's Cooking for Baby cookbook - but then, I have a slight addiction to cookbooks...

My tumbling tumble weed...

Rolling rolling rolling
Like we're baby bowlin'
Watch that baby rollin'
JJ!

Well, he put two and two together today - he's been turning front to back, 2 days ago he figured out back to front, and today he just kept rolling! Time to baby proof the house (or at least, install speed bumps) Fortunately, he's a right-hand only roller (can only roll to his right), so we just need to make sure there are no open doors or snake pits on his right ;)

Return of the Milk Blister (TMI)

So I'm in the shower the other day, massaging one breast because I can feel the knots starting from a clogged milk duct when I look down and notice a milk blister, Fortunately, I know what to do and gently remove the obstruction. Well, it must've been "contents under pressure" because milk shot out and arced back over my shoulder for like 30 seconds!! Wild! No more knots though - hooray!

Flipped from back to front

Well, it happened. Rolling onto his back had gotten to be old hat - so today he rolled onto his front. Time to child proof the house! Must be the bananas...

Yes, we have some bananas...

Since rice cereal is now "old" (the doc said give him new foods 3 times before you try something new), today we started bananas. Mmm Mmm good - JJ thought they were pretty tasty! He still thinks the spoon is a lame delivery mechanism - way too slow. The child has no patience :)

And yet another poop record - 10 days

Yikes! Thankfully, we caught it in the toilet (hooray for EC!!) so no messy cleanup. 10 days...that is one super efficient colon this kid has got!

My child, the cannibal

What is the definition of parent? Someone covered in baby goo. For the first couple of months, this was generally pee from leaky diapers. Then it was spit up. Now, we have entered the drool phase. This phase is characterized by JJ latching onto anything that gets even close to his mouth, including but not limited to his hands and feet, his toys, my fingers arms wrists, his shirt, his bath towel... you get the picture. And he chews HARD - it's a good thing this kid doesn't have teeth yet or I'm sure I'd be short a finger or two! John and I are both thoroughly chewed on and covered in baby slobber. Guess we taste like chicken :)

Real Tears

Interestingly, there was a post recently on the Babyfit message board about crying real tears. JJ (a regular little drama king) has been doing this since he was less than 2 weeks old (I remember because my mom was still here and she only stayed for 2 weeks). Well, lots of people were saying their baby started doing that only recently - I hadn't realized it was odd hat JJ did this so early! So I tried to look it up on the internet. Boy - it was tough finding anything. Finally, I found this article that says they make tears from birth (otherwise the would get dry eyes, which sort of makes sense) but that no one really knows why they don't cry with tears until usually 2-4 months of age. It says some people think it is an immaturity of the nervous system, others a lack of emotional intensity. Weird. So I don't know if that means that JJ just has a super advanced optical nervous system (could be since his eyes have tracked together since birth which is also unusual, apparently) or if we should assume he has a future in theater :)

What a day!

Ugh, what a day I had!


After the usual morning stuff, I weigh myself and find that I am 4 lbs heavier than yesterday - 4!!! I don't remember swallowing a midget, so I stump into the kitchen and throw some oatmeal in the microwave for breakfast, nearly tripping over the dog who is shadowing my every move. I realize she needs to be fed, so I feed her and realize that all my breast pump parts are dirty and if I'm going to pump this morning, I'd better clean them. So I clean them and while I'm doing that, the microwave dings and my oatmeal is done. SO I pull out the oatmeal and get some raspberries I bought on Friday out of the fridge and sprinkle them on the oatmeal,only then realizing that half of them are fuzzy! So I pick out the fuzzy ones (ewwww), finish cleaning the breast pump parts, sit down to eat breakfast and pump. 5 minutes later, JJ wakes up screaming. I get up, change his diaper, give him an opp-pee-tunity, and put him in his swing so I can finish eating and pumping. Commence ear-shattering screams. So, I quickly finish up pumping and take him into the living room to play on the floor. He jollies for a bit but keeps getting upset, so I'm just about ready to try feeding him when DING DONG - Jehovah Witness. Not kidding. I get rid of them, get JJ settled for feeding and RING RING - the house phone rings. JJ is all distracted by the ring, so I haul myself up and go to answer it and they hang up as I get there. Argh! Finally get JJ fed and back to sleep and am able to work pretty steadily for the rest of the day until late afternoon when all of a sudden my foot seizes up in an awful cramp. I rub it, stretch it, use foul language on it - nothing works. So I limp around trying to finish my day working and taking care of the baby. John gets home and makes dinner (yeah!) and I am talking to him and go to sit down on the kitchen chair while holding JJ. Well, I'm not looking behind me and I manage to catch the edge of the chair which scoots the whole thing backward landing me on my butt. Since I'm holding JJ (and I'm not about to let anything happen to him), I pretty much take the entire impact on my tail bone. JJ is fine. So, now, foot hurting so bad I'm limping and bruised tail bone, I think I'll just call it a day and try to start again tomorrow. Ugh.

Ha ha - gotcha! (the tootsie tracker)

Ladies and gentlemen, we have feet! JJ managed to finally get a hold of those wiggly little rascals and show them who's boss by promptly sticking them in his mouth. I wish I was that flexible! Not that I want to put my feet in my mouth, just saying...uh, nevermind :)

Diaper changes are definitely getting more challenging!

Spoon!!!!!!!!

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a successful docking! After reading extensively about giving JJ solids, I anticipated a HUGE struggle with the spoon. Everything is plastered with big warnings to "not get discouraged" and "be patient" and "try again in a few weeks." So we went in armed for bear. Talk about anti-climatic! I tipped the first spoonful of rice gruel up to JJs lips and he slurped it down like a champ. There was no "crying at the unfamiliar sensation" - there was only crying that we ran out of cereal! Then there was crying about the gas later, but that's not the spoon's fault.

Bad mommy...

Ugh. After successfully getting the little jelly bean off to lala land at 8:30 and myself to sleep by 10:30, he woke up SCREAMING at midnight. And not the, gosh-I'm-hungry-please-take-off-your-shirt variety. Oh no. This was the what-have-you-done-to-me-I'm-dying variety. John and I muzzily try to figure out what's wrong - change the diaper? check, burped? check, no hot spikes poking him anywhere? check. I try to feed him as usual and he just wails like this is the cause of all his heartache. John walks him around to calm him while I frantically google what it might be. Could it be the rice cereal?

Well, while the rice cereal probably did give him some wicked gas (which is what it turned out to be by the way), we apparently screwed up giving it to him in the bottle. Now, that's totally unrelated to the extremely stressful (and if you've never had an infant screaming at you in the middle of the night while you try to get your sleep-deprived brain to figure out what's wrong without breaking down crying yourself, you do not know what stressful is) screaming baby incident. According to what I read, giving the baby rice cereal in a bottle is *bad*! Why? Because they don't know the difference between milk and milk+cereal, they end up eating more than they should, forming bad habits which cause them to be obese in later life. Oh, and it also messes up their little digestive systems since you bypass the reflex that keeps them from eating solids until their tummy is ready. I am not making this up. So now I feel even worse than before because I didn't do my homework and find this out before I doomed my child to a life as a fat tub o' lard. Ok, not really, but I still feel bad. Why don't people tell you this stuff???

Introducing Solids

At his 4 month appointment, the doc says we can start introducing solids now. We decided to give him just a little rice cereal in some breast milk in a bottle today at lunch and then again at dinner. When you feed children solids, the doc says you introduce a food three times by itself, watching for adverse reactions. After 3 times, the food is "old" and can be given any time in combination with other old foods.

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I'm thinking "cool! Soon someone else can feed him without me." On the other hand, I'm thinking "crap! Soon someone else can feed him without me." It's a little odd - I really thought I'd be totally pumped. This reluctance is unexpected and a bit disconcerting. He still will be getting his primary nutrition from breast milk, but for how much longer? Sigh. If I'm this bad about introducing solids, what am I going to be like when he goes to school. Yikes!

I'm sure I'll get over it, but today I feel kind of sad.

(maybe I'm just worried about the legendary poo that solids bring... : ) )

Teething story

So, we took JJ in for his 4 month appt yesterday (12lbs, 2 oz, 23.75inches tall, head circ 16.5 inches) and I asked the doctor what we could do to ease his teething discomfort. He says,"let me tell you about a patient I lost because of teething" and tells us this story:

"I am called into the emergency room one day to see a little girl, about 5 months old. She's green. After examining her, I determine she's suffering from liver failure. It turns out her mother and grandmother decided that they didn't want her to suffer through teething so they had been giving her infant Tylenol every 4 hours for the last 2 weeks! We were able to get the little girl a liver transplant and she managed to go through the chemo to deal with the rejection just fine. Then her brother came home with the chicken pox and she died about 6 hours later from a major chicken pox infection (her immune system was just that low)."

ACK!!! Like I wasn't paranoid enough about giving JJ medications as it is. How scary is that?

Baby Book Reviews

Children's books - ya gotta love 'em. Here's some reviews of a few of JJ's favorites:

That's Not My Dinosaur - a gripping tale of a mouse in search of his dinosaur. Using clever sensory detective work (too fuzzy, too rough, etc.), the protagonist eliminates one dinosaur after another.

Little Chick and Friends - a tour of barnyard animals. I originally supposed this review would be led by our cover character and star of the title, Little Chick. Unfortunately, he only makes an appearance on the cover, like so many celebrity "authored" books out today.

But Not the Hippopotamus - a timeless story outlining the inadvertent discrimination's felt by many in today's clique driven society. This story ends on a somewhat bittersweet note and may not be appropriate for very empathic children.

Nursing Necklace - it's here!

John ordered me a nursing necklace and it arrived today. JJ *loves* it already and so do I. John got me the "Earth Angel" one and it looks really nice. JJ immediately grabbed onto it while nursing and started playing with it. It couldn't have come at a better time - I've been getting pretty beat up during our nursing sessions! Yesterday, he managed to get a hold of a fistful of my hair (ow!) and he routinely pinches my breasts while eating (ow!) I'm so glad to have something his busy hands can grab that doesn't result in a bald patch on my head ;)

I hope it will help him concentrate better too - lately he's been having "bright-and-shiny" sessions where he'll eat for a minute, pull off and look around (as in "ooh, what was that bright and shiny thing?") then eat for a minute, pull off and look around, repeat ad infinitum. It got so bad the other day, he actually didn't even re-latch in between distracting himself! He just moved his mouth back towards the nipple and before he latched on he got distracted again and whipped his head back around to see Lord-only-knows-what going on behind him. I told him that a) he's going to get whiplash doing that and b) this is currently his only job around here, and unless he wants to start cleaning toilets, he'd better concentrate. I don't think he was listening though.

A new poo record!

Apparently I can't resist posting about poo. We have a new record - 9 days. I kid you not - poor little guy went 9 days between poos. Ugh! Maybe I need to eat more fiber (LOL)