Mommy and Sweet Pea

In my parenting group, almost all of the other parents have started giving their babies solid food. I think they all started with rice cereal. This is what I had initially planned on doing as well because I had heard that that's the best first food because it's bland and easy to swallow. However, there is little nutritional value. Then, a friend of mine said, "You should look into baby-led weaning." The first time I tried to look it up online, all I found was information on extended breastfeeding. Then, I stumbled across some information on a forum that I frequent and learned what it's really all about. I also got some information from the British (I think?) website babyledweaning.com . As far as I've been able to determine, the main ideas behind this theory of baby feeding are that, when babies are developmentally ready, you can give them finger foods and they will have control over what they eat, helping them to eat healthily to meet their own tastes and ne...

My breastfeeding story begins much like my cloth diapering story . The only other moms I knew breastfed their babies, it was healthy and cheap, and it felt like a natural choice. The main difference is that whereas the choices in cloth diapers were overwhelming at first – types, materials, new or used, etc. – I actually felt VERY prepared for breastfeeding, and like it was a straightforward decision. I had read books about it, attended seminars on it, and watched several people breastfeed for the first time, as a doula. I was a little nervous about what it would feel like and if I would be comfortable doing it around other people, but I didn't worry about it much. To my surprise, it turns out that breastfeeding is THE most challenging thing I've experienced as a new parent so far. Before I go any further, I feel like I should let you know that at 6 months old, Sweet Pea is an exclusively breast-fed (EBF) baby. So, we have had success, but it was hard-won. Perhaps it is espec...

This is an expanded version of a part of my earlier cloth diaper evangelist post, and part of the Cloth Diapering Bloggers Carnival. Today, I'm writing about how we wash diapers at our house. Everybody does it differently. I think that for many people, the washing itself seems to be the most intimidating, difficult part of cloth diapering at first. It may even prevent many people from trying cloth, but my experience is that it very quickly becomes part of your normal household routine. We've tried a few variations, but fairly quickly learned what worked for us, and what was unnecessary for us. Step One: Toss wet diapers into a pail with a screw-top lid. We didn’t use the lid at first as her pee and poo didn’t smell much. Now that she is stinkier, we are more inclined to use the lid. Although I’ve heard that enclosing the dirties can make the smell worse, you do at least trap it for the most part. Most of the time, we spray off poo diapers with a sprayer attached to the back o...

We took our four nice Henckel knives in to the Excalibur shop (great name for a knife store, right?) yesterday to be sharpened. That means that today all we have to use are the crappy, serrated-edge knives that we only keep as back-ups. I guess I am a knife snob, but it makes such a difference when you use a good sharp knife. This afternoon I cut up two sweet potatoes to make some food for Sweet Pea, and I got so frustrated with the crooked cutting and the food falling off the cutting board because it was basically splitting like a chunk of wood instead of being nicely sliced. Imagine the difference between a log cut with a chain-saw falling to the ground and a round of wood chopped with an axe shooting pieces out in all directions. OK, maybe that's not the perfect analogy, but the point is that I want my vegetables to stay on the cutting board and be somewhat uniform. Our good knives will be ready on Wednesday and I can't wait to get them back! Now, back to the baby food. I ...

I am working on a series of posts about breastfeeding, and still have many more posts related to cloth diapering to edit and publish, but for today I thought I'd actually post about what I'm doing -- today. Before I started reading blogs much, I thought that that's what most of them were, because a "web log" sounds like a daily journal to me. Obviously, blogs are sometimes daily journals, and can be very popular as that, but most of the ones I read are more like articles or editorials than personal journals. I'm still in the early stages with this blog, so I'm experimenting with different styles of writing, and different topics, and thinking that I'll naturally start to focus in on what is best for me over time. This flies in the face of all of the advice that I've gotten from friends, and from professional sites such as Pro Blogger and his 31 Days to Build a Better Blog . Oh well. Without further ado, my day today: Average has the day off today, s...

This summer, I resolved to pack lunches for my husband to take to work. Three days a week he works 10-hour days, and two days a week he works 5 hours in the afternoons. So, I only need to prepare something for those three days he is away from home at lunchtime. Easy, right? I'm sad to say, I actually have only done this about 50% of the time, if that. When I do get up early enough to put a lunch together in the morning, I find I enjoy doing it. It can be fun to try to think of different things for Average to try, and different ways to include all the food groups. Yesterday, I made a pretty typical lunch for him, and documented it with our camera, to share with you! This post is part of the Purple Lunchbox series hosted by 3 Blooming Buds . Generally, I try to have carbs, fruit, vegetables, protein, and a treat. First, I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. We like Adams Natural Peanut Butter , and home-made jam, of course. For this sandwich, I used strawberry jam made by Averag...

A drawing of the interior of our first plane, on the back of a napkin, by Average There are other stories from our cross-country trip that I didn't mention in my earlier posts , as Average pointed out in his comment . Some may be worthy of sharing, so I'm going to write and post a few. Here is the first one: On the way to our vacation destination, our last flight is on a tiny commuter plane. Average and I are seated in the front row on the side with two seats (I think there's a bathroom in front of us), and therefore have no underseat storage place for our extra large bag full of all of sweet pea's clothes and diapers for the entire week. I assure you, it did meet the rules for carry-on, but there was no way it would fit in that tiny overhead storage compartment. I'm doing my best to stuff it up there anyway, when the teenager in the seat across the aisle from us offers to stow it under the seat in front of her. This is the kindness of strangers! We are very gratefu...