Baby's First Steps

Video number two! This happened back on January 11. She is starting to take more and more steps on her own. She can get from one piece of furniture to another without holding anything, and can walk all over the house if she holds someone's hand. Walking is such an exciting development for us, but a little bit scary too. She can get into more trouble, it seems, and has a higher likelihood of bad bonks on the head. Wish us luck!

Rocking Snail Video

This is my first time sharing a video. If it is successful, you can look forward to more videos in the coming weeks, including a video of baby's first steps!

I bought this rocking snail the other day at a re-sale shop, and Sweet Pea loves it. It is so much fun to watch her go. She also enjoys standing next to it and rocking it with her arms.

Is My Baby a Picky Eater?

Or is she just being a baby?

She has been interested in food for months and months. We started giving her food, some whole chunks, some purees and mushes, since she was about 6 months old. Now, Sweet Pea is eleven months old (tomorrow!) and it is still REALLY hit or miss whether she will eat food at any given meal. I haven't done a post on baby food since October, because I really didn't know what to say. One week I'd think we were "over the hump" and that now she would be eating quite a bit, and then three days would pass with her eating next to nothing! Luckily my milk supply is holding up!

Right now we offer her food about three times a day, and I never can predict whether she will eat it or not. Sometimes she will eat quite a bit (which for her is like a half a piece of bread, or 3-4 tablespoons). Sometimes she will eat nothing. Some days she loves sweet potatoes, other days she spits it out as soon as it touches her mouth, and other days she won't even open up to allow it in! It is like this with every single thing she has eaten so far. One day she loves it, the next she won't even take a bite. Maybe it's a control issue, maybe she is a picky eater, and maybe she is just being a baby and this is a normal course of development for her. Today, for example, she only ate about 3 Cheerios (organic, no high fructose corn syrup) at breakfast, even though that is one of the things she has eaten the most consistently. She spit out the blueberries I tried to feed her. At lunch, she LOVED the plain yogurt with jam that I fed her, and was fine taking it from a spoon (she often grabs the spoon from our hands and won't let us feed her with it). Yet, she totally rejected the crackers and bread that I offered her alongside the yogurt.

I am trying to just go with the flow with this, because I know I don't want to turn food into a battle between us, but it becomes so frustrating when I prepare three different things for a meal for her three times a day, and she might eat one or two of the things, at one or two of the meals, in a totally unpredictable pattern. Sometimes she throws her food as soon as we set it in front of her, sometimes throwing food is a sign that she is done. Should I just buy some processed baby food so that it doesn't make me feel like I wasted my time when she refuses or throws the food that I prepared? Advice?

Dresser Painting Project Finished! Sort Of...

For the last few weeks, I have been debating what to do with my dresser project. This project has been "on the table" for way too long; I don't even want to think about how long ago I started this. I painted oh, about eight coats on with my sprayer, and the furniture polish was still coming through a little bit when I last updated you. It took quite a while to figure out that this was what was happening. My mom had bought the dresser used for me, and put some dark furniture polish on it before she brought it to me. Apparently that stuff is STRONG because after those eight coats of paint, including two initial coats of primer, there is still some pink tinge coming through. I was so frustrated because I painted several other things while working on the dresser, usually to use up the last of the paint in the sprayer while I waited for a coat of paint on the dresser to dry. (I was very careful about keeping my sprayer clean, not letting any paint dry inside it.) Everything else that I painted took three coats of paint or less to look completely white and smooth. So, it has to be the furniture polish, right? Live and learn, I guess. This weekend, I finally got fed up with having half of my garage taken up with this dresser and the plastic sheeting hanging around it and decided, "it's good enough." Maybe this summer I will take it up again and do some more sanding and painting when I don't have to use vast amounts of electricity to heat the garage warm enough to paint, and when I don't care so much about using the garage for parking my car. So, here is the dresser in Sweet Pea's room.

Now that I have it inside, I actually feel pretty good about how it looks. I like the metal drawer pulls I chose, and the pink isn't really all that odd-looking, I think. Also, I am just happy that this piece of furniture makes the room complete. Eleven months after her birth my baby finally has a finished bedroom without any odd piles of stuff in the corner. The baskets on the shelves had been what we were using to store her clothes, but they were becoming too small. Now, they hold her toys! Yes, that is a trash can on top of the dresser. Sweet Pea loves to empty things, and she also puts everything in her mouth. And we also have a puppy. So, we have items in odd places so we can keep them out of reach of those two.

And just for fun, one of the other things I painted while I had everything set up. This quilt stand has a cut-out that matches the pattern of our wedding quilt (the one in front). It was raw wood with some marks from stickers, and I really like how it looks white.

It sure feels good to have that space in my garage back! What do you think I should do with the dresser: strip it and re-paint it, strip it and stain it, or leave it how it is?