-Testing the Wordpress application on my iPhone.-
Took this picture during an impromptu lunch at Baja Fresh. This was before her meal (avocado, grilled mahi mahi, and a lime wedge- all scrounged from my tacos) and before The Dad’s plate of rice and beans was blown into her face. Oh, the hazards of dining outdoors!
Pic Taken 7/13
She did not seem to like this as much as the meatball she had a few weeks ago.
Boobs are still her preferred source of food:
Hello! Mommy’s up here!
Hi! A little catch-up post for you:
We’re pretty certain that all these things are related. The theory of wonder weeks has been helpful- In retrospect, they are dead on, so we were pretty confident in “diagnosing” the 36 week fussy time.
What I’m saying here is that we’ve had no time for blogging. We used to do it from the laptop while she played on the floor, but now she wants to type too. Well, bang on the keyboard. We also used to blog while she was napping, but lately, not so much.
*While she did have her first french fries over the weekend, she did not get any ketchup.
The July 4th holiday weekend was chock full of firsts:
Please excuse the blurry phone shots- we were busy being social, so we did not pull out the big camera during these meals. Which is a bit of a shame, because Baby Girl was a charming dining companion!
The last three items (chip, pickle, chair) happened during an impromptu stop at a local restaurant for Sunday brunch. We were checking out a local summer market, where we visited a friend’s booth and picked up a beautiful embroidered pocket diaper, and decided to have lunch while we were out. This outing was such a great example of why BLW works so well. There was no drama to the meal, no worries about baby food, just a chance to enjoy some new food.
Baby sat on our laps until the food arrived, and then we stuck her in the (slightly grimey) high chair. She either sucked on the chip or pickle, played with the little toy we tied to the chair, or made smiley faces at the wait staff. Or shrieked with joy. Loudly. Anyway, it was good. Especially the pickle. I think we’re gonna try to get a video of her with a pickle. She liked it, but had to make a major “tart face” after each suck. So, so cute. So cute, it made me want to have, like, eight more babies, just so I could watch them taste a pickle for the first time.
Breastfeeding, working, pumping, washing parts, breastfeeding, working, pumping, washing parts, breastfeeding, working, pumping, washing parts, breastfeeding,working, pumping, washing parts….
You get the idea.
Pumping isn’t any fun, but it forces me to take regular breaks at work and I get to do a few flights of stairs on the way there and back. Washing parts is actually the worst part for me, but that’s because I am not a huge fan of dishwashing in general. One reason I’m glad I splurged on the Freestyle: no little tiny parts to wash/keep track of/lose. I do get occasional dips in pumping output, but Baby Girl is happy and thriving. She gets three bottles at daycare, each containing 3 to 4 ounces. Just last week we started sending in a “snack,” apple wedges, or steamed carrot sticks or snap peas.
If pumping is tollerable, then breastfeeding directly is an absolute joy. The first few months were hard work, even painful at times, but it has all paid off a billion times over. It’s easy and effortless, ready 24/7, and it gives so much contentment to the babe. Just last week we started using the word “milk” immediately before nursing, and she clearly recognizes the word already. Still doesn’t respond to her name, but milk, that she knows!
This morning, the Dad thought that Baby Girl smelled a little “off.” We couldn’t find anything amiss, so we set off for daycare. Lo, she had pooped! Side note: dirty cloth diapers (wet or poopy) do not smell nearly as bad as dirty disposables.
The kind lady at daycare set to changing her while I unpacked the bottles and apple wedges. I looked up and caught a glimpse of Baby Girls first semi-solid poo… Lucky me! Less orange and more solid than straight breast milk poo, it almost looked fluffy. Fluffy, with little bits of carrot.
Well, meatball, really. One turkey meatball.
Are you sure this is food? Are you trying to trick me?
Don’t let this face fool you- she demolished that thing. The spaghetti was not such a hit, but she did play with it a bit. Please take note: even with the tiniest amount of sauce possible, spaghetti is still very, very messy.
She even had bits of meatball stuck to her chest under the bib.
We’ve been offering fruits and veggies daily, but Monday, we offered Baby Girl some meat. A whole sauteed chicken tenderloin, which quickly ended up like this:
She completely ignored the sweet pepper strips that came with and focused on destroying that piece of chicken. She was so into it, she practically worked up a sweat. Which gave us one of the grossest [non-poop related] baby pictures of all time:
We can’t tell whether that sheen is sweat or chicken juice.
She had a bath directly after this picture was taken.
And her next poopy diaper smelled like…chicken.
One of the primary facets of baby led weaning is that you should offer your baby any and all appropriate table foods. We haven’t really been doing this because, well, we’ve been eating lots of inappropriate table foods (super spicy stuff, whole grains with runny stews, soup, cheeeeesy oily pizza, hot dogs, etc…).
Also, she’s been totally content to play with the food on her tray and never shows much interest the stuff on our plates. For example, on green bean night, I cooked her beans separately while ours were simmered with chicken and curry sauce. After hers were “spent,” I sucked the spicy sauce off one of my beans and handed it over. She was not amused with the funny-tasting bean and dropped it like a hot potato. And then glared at it. And me.
So we’re cool with skipping cereal and purees, going right to whole foods, but I cannot get past the single ingredient thing. I don’t think this is bad, it’s just boring for us. So we’re going to make more of an effort to eat things that we can offer to her. I think that we’ll try chicken tomorrow.
