BLW...

Baby Led Weaning...

I read up on baby led weaning and thought it was a great idea for us.  Pretty much, instead of spoon feeding your baby starting at 4 months like pediatricians recommend, you wait until your baby shows interest in food and let her start feeding herself when she's ready (usually between 6 & 9 months).  No spoons, no jars, no making baby food.  I was sold.

Until the following feeding situations occurred in our house.

1.  The new eating ritual.

Stretchy starts eating as a normal baby.  Usually she seems ravenous.  I settle in with my iPad or Kindle and prepare for a good 10 minutes of web surfing or reading when suddenly, she becomes the most observant, interested and contemplative baby on earth.

I imagine the following to take place in her mind while eating:

"Can I fit my hand in my mouth while eating?  How about this burp cloth?  Will it fit too?  Speaking of burp cloths, when did you last wash this one?  Let me taste it to find out?  HEY! Did you see a cat over there?  Where's the cat?  No?  I was sure I saw a cat.  Let me check again.  You were right.  No cat.  But have you seen that light over there?  Wow... what a light.  Hmm... I wonder what toys we'll play with ne-- WHAT WAS THAT?? Did you hear that noise?  Oh, it was just the ice maker?  Are you sure?  Let me look around to see if someone's there.  Hey! There's the cat!  I hear a cat! I hear a cat!  I want to pet the cat.  I WANT TO PET THE CAT!!  Oh, the cat's gone?  Guess I'll eat my hand... tasty... WAIT! Don't put that away yet! I wasn't finished!!"

Needless to say, I'm pretty sure she's eating less during the day.

2.  While eating my food the other day, Stretchy obviously wanted some.

Here's the senario:

I'm eating.

She's following the forks every move.

Plate, mouth, plate, mouth.

She starts opening her mouth when I do.

Plate, mouth open, plate mouth open.

Then she makes cute little chewing motions...

What was I to do... we keep trying pieces of food, but she's not coordinated enough to hold on to them yet.

So I broke out the baby food and decided that for us, Baby Led Weaning meant the Baby was telling us that she wanted to eat... and since she can't feed herself, that means we bought some cute baby spoons...

So I've waved goodbye to my decision to do Baby Led Weaning.  Now, in our house, BLW stands for Bring Lots of Washcloths...

Here's a cute video of Stretchy eating avocado:

A Third Chair at the Table

At four months babies can start eating solid food.  In preparation for Stretchy eating, we bought her a seat for the table.  We might have gone the actual high-chair route, but we really don't have the space.  This travel baby chair is pretty awesome and it takes up less space than a normal chair at the table.  AND it looks really comfy.  I wonder if they make them in grown-up sizes?

At first she seemed a little confused...

But then decided she liked it.

Metzker liked it too.

I guess the typical first foods are vegetable purees and cereals.  We're thinking about Baby Led Weaning, where the baby starts eating real food when they're interested instead of being spoon fed.  Stretchy isn't quite ready for this yet, but since she's sitting at the dinner table now, I figured we'd see how she liked real food.

Food 1:  Squash.
Stretchy's Reaction:  Seemed to like it.
Amount eaten:  Sucked off some juice.

My Baby is All Grown Up

As any nursing mom can tell you, feeding a baby makes you SO THIRSTY.  All. the. time.  More often than not I'm balancing a baby on one arm while waiting impatiently at the fridge for the water dispenser to fill my giant plastic cup.  I must also either dance, sway or bounce during this time or said baby gets even more impatient than thirsty mom.

Lately, as I've been drinking water during all our play-time activities, Stretchy has become very interested in what's going on in that cup.  She stares, oogles, talks to and reaches for it almost every time I pick it up to take a sip.

A couple days ago, on my way to the fridge, with just a drop left, she grabbed the cup with both hands and brought it to her mouth.  Does she do this with all her toys?  Yes.  Is a cup a pretty rattling toy?  No.  So I thought, "Hey, maybe she's really thirsty too."

I was right on:

Pretty soon she'll be sitting at the table with a full set of silverware...

My Daily Life Is...

currently not really worth blogging about.  Sorry :(  Plus, to be honest, I hardly have time to check and respond to e-mail, let alone upload photos and write blog posts.  Turns out MiniM.E. doesn't really like to sit and work on the computer...

Not that Molly isn't interesting.  She is the most fascinating human being I've ever spent 24 hours a day with.  However, what I find fascinating and interesting isn't really blog-worthy as there are probably only a total of 2 other people (Dad & Grandma) who would agree with my obsession with everything MiniM.E. does.

Originally, this blog was going to be:
A: A place to post funny stories about being a new mom
B: A place to post recipes that are either awesomely tasty, super easy, or fun for kids
C: A place to post artwork I make for the baby or that we make together

I think (A) might occur once in a while, but for the most part, my days include none of "cooking", "baking" or eating anything other than prepackaged foods and they certainly do not include time for creating artwork (with or without baby) or even thinking of ideas for artwork.

Instead, my days include a lot of
A: Feeding a baby (which sometime soon will lead to a funny story about being a new mom)
B: Changing a baby (again, I'm sure will have a good story at some point)
C: Holding a baby (which makes it hard to do anything else)
D: Watching a baby sleep (and occasionally dozing off)
E: Doing laundry (at least 3 loads a day)
F: A, B & C, in no particular order, repeatedly.

Like I said, while I find A-D fascinating because MiniM.E. is my baby, I'm sure the rest of the world probably doesn't need to read posts about my daily life -- unless of course something awesome, funny, unexpected, or ridiculous happens.

So here are some cute pictures to hold you over for a while.

Once MiniM.E. starts getting into a routine (and maybe napping by herself) I will try to post more photos and hopefully funny stories.  Until then, I'll be feeding, changing, holding, watching, cleaning and not sleeping pretty much full time, so please excuse my lack of posting... eventually, this blog will be all those things I planned... I hope...

A Beautiful Sunday

As we get used to having a baby, we've started doing a few more "normal" things.  MiniM.E. and I have made a few trips to the grocery store and we've been out to see a few people and had some people over.  Still, during the week- for the most part- we stay in.

Not that I don't like sitting in my house all day, every day, trying to recover while constantly feeding or changing a crying baby while still getting a few important things done like laundry (so MiniM.E. has clean clothes since she only has a few outfits that fit her tiny peanut body right now) and dishes (so that I can eat cereal and ice cream- why don't we have enough bowls??).  Seriously though, I love being home with MiniM.E.  I wouldn't have it any other way.  And even though she can be pretty demanding sometimes, every time I look at her my heart melts and I feel like I would do anything for her.  SO... I'm really not complaining.

BUT, it is nice to get out of the house and get some fresh air.

Sunday we decided to walk around downtown- our first big stroller outing!  The weather was gorgeous and MiniM.E. seemed to enjoy being pushed around and shown off to interested strangers.  We even got frozen yogurt (which hopefully MiniM.E. got to enjoy later- how does that work, anyway?).

After our downtown excursion we had a few stops to make in Wilton (the town with all the shopping essentials like Target and Wal-Mart- we'll be making lots of trips there, so it's a good thing MiniM.E. likes riding in the car).  Since we'd already been out for two hours, it meant we had to do an in-car-feeding.

Let me share how my thought process went:

"Wait, where is the burp cloth?  Oh, on my knee.  Check.  And that moisturizing stuff?  Crap.  On the nightstand at home... oh well..."

"Okay, how to I get the baby underneath this feeding cape thing while holding her with one hand?"

"What the ----?  Why did I have to wear a shirt whose material sticks to the material of the feeding cape?  How am I supposed to see the baby?"

"... Come on MiniM.E., I know we're in a strange place, but latch already!"

"I'm too hot... and thirsty... and do you think people driving by can see my boob?  What if they walk next to the car?  Then do you think they could see it?  This stupid cape is in the way!  Maybe I should just take it off... but no, there are cars driving by... why couldn't Target have a bigger parking lot?  Or a special breastfeeding parking lot... or better yet, a special feeding room near the restrooms like at BuyBuyBaby??"

It was a pretty trying experience.  But we got it done, and MiniM.E. was happy and let us run our errands and even rode back in the car without getting too fussy.


Long story short- downtown Saratoga was awesome.  Feeding a baby in the car was not.  And now we have laundry detergent and diapers.