Eating What They Eat Can Be Kinda Gross!

I decided a while back that if I was going to give it to my kids to eat I would try it too. Up to this is point I have tried all the things she has eaten, from breast milk to maple teething biscuits and everything in between.

A lot the foods are quite decent but some of the things they make for babies and toddlers to eat are quite frankly disgusting and unpalatable.

Take run of the mill baby formula for example. That stuff might just be the worst thing I have ever tasted. I was looking for a formula for her for when we went out of town. She had been strictly breast fed up to this point so it was going to be the first time either of us had tried formula. I made up a small bottle of it and took a sip. It was pretty awful, very strong and so sweet;it tasted nothing like breast milk. I needed a large glass of water just to rinse it down. I decided to give it to her and see if it was specially designed for a baby’s palate. I gave her the bottle, she took a sip and immediately gagged and spit it out. I thought maybe it was just a fluke so I gave it to her again, only to have her gag, spit it out and give me a “why are you torturing me?” look. I checked to make sure I made it properly and it seemed I had. It was at that point that I decided it was not specially designed for babies just designed to be gross.  She wouldn’t drink it and frankly I couldn’t blame her. Needless to say we tried a different kind. I finally found a formula that tasted a lot like a vanilla protein shake. When I gave it to her she took it with no problem.

Another example is packaged veggie baby foods. Amelie loves fresh home cooked veggies and has liked every kind I have given her (brussel sprouts  included) but in no uncertain terms will she eat jarred veggie baby food. She will literally push it away, spit it out and throw it on the floor. If you ever tried it you would probably want to do a similar thing. It kind of tastes how I imagine day old soggy broccoli would taste if it had been left out over night. I can tell you right now that you couldn’t pay me to eat it everyday.

Here is what I have learned: babies can quickly develop a decent palate.Go figure! This realization has made feeding her a lot easier. I don’t know why I expected her to have a special taste for nasty things but through my experiences I have been thoroughly disabused of any such notions.

So my new policy is: If I think it tastes gross she probably will too. It has worked out pretty well for us so far.

A Little Dirt Never Hurt

At some point as a parent you give into the dirt, mud and puddles and decide it is not worth the battle. Besides, you would way rather watch them have a blast than tell them no.

My daughter just got old enough to play at the park. Within 5 minutes she found the one mud puddle in the whole place. It took about two splashes in the mud and she was in heaven. She got totally covered in dirty water within seconds and it didn’t phase her. I hesitated a little and thought about not letting her continue. In the end I figured what the hell, she was already so dirty stopping her now would only make her mad. So instead, I encouraged her to splash harder and took lots of pictures.

I am still working on getting the mud out of her clothes but it was totally worth it!

Returning From The Dead

For the first months after becoming a mom I was mentally a zombie. I am slowly returning from being one of the walking dead. I now have a 9 month old and just started getting a straight 6 hours of sleep a night. I almost feel human again.

Some days I was so zoned out my mind wouldn’t even function on the simplest of tasks. Not to mention I became the most forgetful person I had ever met. I left my wallet and purse more places than I can count. Considering how many times I forgot it somewhere I can actually be happy that it only got stolen once. It got so bad that I had to implement a system where I checked to make sure I had my keys,phone and wallet before I left my house, any store, mall or restaurant.I got so used to the lack of sleep that most days it was just normal, I guess you learn to cope with a new norm pretty quickly. OH how much better the world looks with 6 hours of uninterrupted sleep!

Our baby life has been pretty packed the last few months. There have been a lot of firsts:  First teething experience (not the funnest thing ever) which came with a first cold (sucky).  Her first tooth and then another, first words (yes Mama was first then Papa!), she learned to climb the stairs (which nearly gave me my first grey hairs and it still gives me a heart attack watching her).  She is keeping us all busy and is ridiculously entertaining.
First Halloween
First time at the beach

First trip to SF.

Can’t wait to get caught up and I am looking forward to continuing the blog!

To do or not to do?: DEFINITELY DO!!!

So I just took a trip to Las Vegas with my husband for a couple of days of R&R sans child. This is was our first time alone since we had her. I am not going to lie, it was amazing!

We slept in until 9:30am (yes, that is sleeping in now), we saw shows, we ate at beautiful restaurants as well as rediscovered that we do indeed still like each other and that we can talk about things other than kids,poop, lack of sleep and money.

I don’t think there is any shame in working out a good place for the kids to stay for a couple of nights while the parents have a little get away, even for a staycation, anything to just get out of the routine and make you take the time to create a bit more than usual on your relationship. 

(Disclaimer: Us liking each other was never in question but over the last 6 months we hadn’t really taken the time to realize that we did. This time alone just reinforced  our admiration for one another. I find that we get so caught up in our everyday routine that we  kind of go on automatic. Doing something just the two of us, shakes up the routine and makes us stop and realize what we have.)

Loving your children is something that will never ever change but with the divorce rate at 50% in America it seems that loving your spouse can. That’s why I think taking the time to really create your marriage or relationship before it is on the rocks is so important, especially once you add children into the mix. Any kid does better with two parents in the home who get along. I come from a divorced household  (a few times over actually) so I know from personal experience the effects a bad marriage and then divorce has on kids (I was the kid).

So I guess the moral of the story is that I need to ensure I continue taking the time to create my marriage. And if we get to do this by taking little trips to Vegas or Napa or even staying home just the two of us I will be pretty stoked! So, if you are out there right now contemplating if you should take a little trip with your honey, then I say to you, DEFINITELY DO!!!

Too many stereotypes

I refuse to play into the stereotypes like, “once you have kids your relationship with your spouse takes a back seat” or “once you have kids you have to give up vacations, trips or fun in general” or my favorite, “once you have kids your ambitions and dreams get put on hold”. I, in no way believe this is true and  think these are horrible stereotypes to try to scare people or give them reason to stop creating on their relationships and lives once they have a kid.

My husband and I are going away for a couple of days and  it will be just the two of us. This will be the first time we leave our daughter for longer than 2 hours. I think you have to do things like this to keep everything running smoothly. I am of course anticipating a shock to my system once when I wake up after 8 hours of solid sleep two days in a row! And I know I will miss my daughter but I have to remind myself it will all work out just fine. I honestly think the 3 of us will be better for it. I will have gotten the most sleep I have had in 6 months and my daughter will get to see her aunties and uncles.Win all around!

I was 6 months pregnant when my husband was offered an all expenses paid trip to China through his university. How could you pass up this opportunity? You can’t! So when our daughter was 6 weeks old he went to China for 2 weeks and had an experience of a lifetime.

I have met people who think that things just stop once you have a baby  and in my experience this doesn’t have to be the case at all. It is true that everything may take a little bit more planning but it doesn’t have to discourage you from actually doing things. I find that activities like going to concerts with friends are important to create a balance. My husband and I both agreed that once we had kids we couldn’t use them as an excuse not to do things in our lives; if you operate like this you may start to resent the fact that you are a parent and that wasn’t something I wanted. So I am trying to heed my own advice,  I will let you know how the trip goes!

Our favorite teethers and things to chew on

Amelie has started teething and it is a whole new world. She gets really fussy when she is teething and I have only found a couple of things that help make it easier on her.

There are two things she loves to chew on.

1. Is her Sophie. It is the number one teether on Amazon and I now know why. I don’t leave the house without it. It is soft and rubbery and squeaks anywhere you bite  on it. I also use it in photos to get her attention and make her smile, works every time! If I post a picture of her smiling more often than not she is looking at her Sophie.

Amelie is the baby, Sophie is the giraffe:)

Sophie made this smile possible:)

We recently lost her Sophie somewhere between the car and the grocery store so I ordered 2 new ones off Amazon right away. Totally worth the $30, I would probably pay double that just to keep her happy in the car and stroller.

2. The only other contender as far as teething toys go are the dolls called “water babies”. These are dolls I used to play with as a girl. They are made of a soft rubber and you can fill them up with water so that they have the weight of a real baby. Anyway,  bought one of these for Amelie, not actually intending it to be for her until she is a little older but once she saw it she knew what she wanted to do with it. The foot of the doll went right in her mouth and she has turned it into an amazing teething toy. Currently the doll has no water in it so that she can pick it up easily; it has become a staple in our teething fixes.

The water baby

chewing the foot

The last thing that I have found to work well for her teething and the fussyness that accompanies it are Hylands Teething Tablets 30x Chamomilla. She loves them and they always calm her down. Highly recommend them to anyone with a teething baby.

Leave me a comment on anything that you use for your teething  babies, I love to have new things in my arsenal.

Road trip with baby:Alone?

So I decided it was time to take a trip up to the Grandparents’ house so that they could see their Great-Granddaughter. They are about a 3.5 hour drive from my house which isn’t too bad but with a 6 month old who isn’t a big napper and the fact that my husband couldn’t go made it a bit of a challenge. This was going to be my first over night outing by myself with Amelie. I was a little nervous but excited at the same time.

First we were going to stop and get together with other family members then meet my Grandparents. We needed to be there to meet the rest of the family by 11am but I knew that she would need to eat between leaving the house at 7:30 and arriving by 11. The way I worked it was for her to sleep for the first leg of the trip and then stop to eat, change her etc once she woke up. This worked out very well and made it so she wasn’t crying while we were driving, huge relief (I don’t do so well if she cries in the car) I would rather stop a million times then have a crying baby in the backseat. Even with the stop we arrived on time to see the family and had a great time!

Amelie and her cousins

Amelie and her auntie

Amelie and her Grandpa

After the first visit with the one side of my family it was on to see Amelie’s Great-Grandparents.  They wanted to take us out to lunch, this is where she tried her first watermelon.

yum watermelon

After lunch we followed the grandparents up a long road to their home that is literally in the middle of nowhere off a dirt road. It took us 40 minutes to get there once we left town.

road to their house

The scenery at their home makes the drive totally worth it!

freshly picked eggplant from my grandma’s garden, reminds me that I still need to cook it:)

It was so nice to go see the grandparents and for Amelie to spend some more time with them.  My Grandpa said, “you know Amelie is really something, she acts like a person not a baby, usually you dread a baby coming over but she has really been a pleasure”.  Such a cute comment! I told him its probably because we talk to her like she is a person.:)

That evening Amelie and I went and checked in at out motel in town. She really love playing on the bed.

Amelie and Sophie

I was kind of worried she wouldn’t sleep well in the new place. Obviously it didn’t seem to phase her.

The next morning we were back on the road again, the first stop we made was in Santa Rosa, California to eat some lunch and take a walk. Amelie loved the ceiling fans at the restaurant, she was totally mesmerized.

she just kept staring at them, super funny.

We then hoped back in the car and drove home. I was so happy that she did so well. She was in good spirits the entire trip,all the way up until bed time that night.

Getting ready for bed back at home

All in all the road trip with just her and I was surprisingly amazing and I would totally do it again! I know now that all I need to do is be prepared to stop every hour or so to get her out of the car and she is totally fine! Looking forward to similar adventures in the future.

Our First Family Outing

 

A couple of weeks into being a new mom I was really ready to get out of my house with the baby and see the world again. We drove down the cost a bit to Capitola and spent the day walking around their cute downtown, walking around the pier, eating in the restaurants and people watching.

I highly recommend doing something like this with people you love to hang out with. I got to do it with my husband, mom and sister so it was amazing. Just going somewhere different, getting some space and having beautiful things to look at was exactly what I needed.

Initiation Into Parenthood

This is the tiny culprit:)

I think it would be fair to liken the first weeks of parenthood to some kind of initiation. You  experience things you may never have dreamed you would. If you don’t get absolutely every imaginable bodily fluid somehow on your person I would be surprised. The day after we brought Amelie home I was changing her and all of a sudden I had yellow baby poop all over my pants and the bottom of my shirt. It came out of no where and I was totally defenseless. Everyone forgot to mention that it can fly out of the baby with such amazing velocity that it will hit you before you have a chance to do anything! I just looked down at her tiny body and laugh out loud. I had already changed my outfit twice that day as she had projectile vomited down my shirt earlier in the morning. Let me just say that it can be astonishing how much liquid a little body can hold.  As I changed again I was laughing; here I am a grown woman thinking I have it all together when along comes this tiny baby to humble me and show me that I can still be pooped on.

There are  certain inevitable situations which I am sure every parent has found themselves in or will find themselves in. How about the day you put your kid in a ridiculously cute outfit and put them in the car. You pull up to you destination to find that they have poo coming from the bottom and top of their clothing. Yes this happened to me while I was on my way into the post office and it was of course the only day I ever left the house with no spare change of clothes. I used up every wipe I had giving her a good scrub down in the back of the car. She had little blue jellies on that day with her cute outfit and they were the only thing that survived her explosion. Needless to say, I shamelessly took her into the post office wearing nothing but her diaper and  blue jellies.

It seems that nothing phases me much anymore, I can’t say I am always ready for what comes out of her but it doesn’t seem to surprise me when it happens.  I know there are still things I haven’t experienced but I am well on my way to being fully initiated.

I would love to hear any stories you have about being initiated into parenthood. Email me or comment right on the blog:)

Bringing The Baby Home

The day she was born

The day we went home

I had Amelie at the hospital but I had what they call a “natural childbirth” as I didn’t use any pain medications. I was in the hospital for about 36hours after I had her and then we got to go home. When we got home I showed her around and told her that this was her house. I kid you not she opened her eyes and moved her head to look around and then she full on wailed the saddest cry I had ever heard. I, of course being totally hormonal and not having really slept for about 4 days started to tear up. I will be honest, I took it personal that she cried when I told her this was her home; I thought for sure she was not happy with it. Looking back I can laugh about it now but at the time it pretty much broke my heart. I am not sure what I expected when I brought her home but I guess it wasn’t that.

I fell in love with my daughter immediately but I can’t say she felt the same way. The first few weeks were interesting. She seemed not nearly as comfortable with me as I was with her. I had been expecting her for so long I was just so happy to finally get to hold her in my arms. She seemed way less impressed. From day one she was the one to want some space. At times she would whimper in our arms but the moment we laid her down on the couch she would be happy. I would look at her with admiration and she looked at me like “I am not sure about you yet”. Needless to say we spent the first few weeks getting acquainted with each other and becoming friends. I am relieved to no longer be in those first few weeks. Though there was one moment that I will always remember. We were laying in bed and she was 4 days old. I looked at her and said, “I am so happy that I am your mom and that I get to have you as my daughter. Your papa and I are going to keep you. We will get to be together as a family and we will always be here for you.” When I was done talking she looked me right in the eyes and smiled. She sighed a sigh of what seemed like relief and then fell soundly asleep.  I teared up, for it was at that moment I knew she would be happy being part of our family.