More Mommy Advice Needed

I'm hoping that all you great friends who commented last time I asked for Mommy advice might throw in a suggestion this time too! (By the way, thanks for all the suggestions about E's bedtime bottle - we've been keeping pictures in frames on the table in his room, and we look at those every night while he eats his bottle. Not only does it keep him focused, but he's also seeing his family's faces and hearing their names every day! Win-win!)

Now I'm asking for some suggestions about getting Elias to feed himself finger foods. I'm certain that he COULD if he wanted to - he can easily pick things up with his fingers, and he can put his hands in his mouth. He just won't feed himself when there's food in front of him. He'll pick up the food and play with it (and throw it on the floor - any suggestions for nipping that in the bud??), but he won't put it in his mouth. Anybody have any thoughts on things I can try to get him to do it? I looked around a bit online, and I pretty much found that he'll do it whenever he's ready. I've tried leaving him alone with the food in case he didn't do it just because I was there feeding him, but he just sat there and whined because nobody was feeding him. I've hung up the hat on making baby food, so I really want to get him on table foods by the time my stash of baby foods runs out, but it's not looking promising if he won't feed himself!

On the same note, any suggestions for how to start the process of him learning to spoon feed himself? I've still never even let him try it because I just don't want to deal with the mess. I probably just need to get over that, but can anybody give me any suggestions on how to make it easier? A certain food that stays on the spoon and won't stain? Should I just take his shirt off? What else?

Thanks to all my Mommy friends out there! :)

I just realized this would be my second post in a row without a picture of Elias in it, and that just can't be! So here's one I snapped yesterday of him playing with his books. He wants them ALL spread around him on the floor - I try to be sneaky and put some back while he's looking at another, but he notices and immediately pulls them back down!

The Culprit: Eggs??

We had another vomiting episode with Elias yesterday, and so now it seems like I can see a similarity between the two. They happened at the same time of day (about 3pm), and both times it was after he had eaten eggs for lunch. The first time, he had a hard-boiled egg yolk mixed in with his vegetables. The second time, it was an egg yolk scrambled with some cheese. Both times, we saw those eggs again. Yesterday was the first time I gave him eggs after the first incident, because I wondered if maybe they had something to do with his being sick the first time. So I guess they did!

What confuses me about this is that he has eaten eggs before without having a problem. I don't keep exact records of what he eats any more, but I know he's had an egg yolk at least 5 or 6 times before this, and he's eaten them in both the ways I mentioned above. So why would he be having problems now that he didn't have the first several times he ate them? Does anybody have any thoughts on this? I do plan to call the doctor to ask about it, but I thought I'd also put it out here and see if anybody has anything to add.

WFMW: Stick Blender

For this week's edition of Works For Me Wednesday, I'm going to talk about an appliance that changed my life. It may be a no-brainer for some of you, but it was quite a revelation for me. This life-changing appliance is the stick blender I use to make baby food.

A little bit of background: I have a Magic Bullet, which is an AWESOME blender and worked great to make Elias' baby food when he was just getting started. However, he's older now and wants thicker, chunkier food. I think that's great and I want him to move to table food as soon as possible, but I was having a terrible time trying to make it in the Magic Bullet. The problem was that in order to make thicker food, you add less water when pureeing, and that just didn't work with the Magic Bullet (or any blender, for that matter). The food just wouldn't move down to the blades to be mashed. I was seriously at the point of throwing in the towel and just moving to jarred food.

But then, a ray of light came down from heaven and landed upon a stick blender that was on markdown clearance at Aldi for a mere $8.99. I figured I might as well give it a try, and I tell you, it has changed my life. It does a great job in pureeing the foods, and I don't add any water at all.

Above you see some carrots I steamed, and below you see what the stick blender did to them. Awesome!The only drawback I have found to using this stick blender is that Elias is scared of the noise, so I can't run it when he's in the room. It doesn't wake him up, though, so I just do it while he's napping.

So for any of you mamas who are or will be making baby food, consider investing in one of these when your little one is ready for stage 2 foods!

Please note the new host site for the WFMW theme: www.wearethatfamily.com.

My Son is a Carnivore

I just wanted to post a quick note that Elias is now a carnivore... He ate chicken for the first time today! He's not at all sure that he liked it, kept shuddering at the texture. But he ate all that I gave him, and he'll keep getting more! He's been starting to get hungry before it's time for the next feeding the past couple of days, so we're upping his intake and giving the child some meat! We definitely have a growing boy on our hands! So hopefully that'll solve our waking-up-early problem... I'm so proud of my big, growing boy!

Adventures in Solids

We are having so much fun with solid foods! Elias is doing awesome and loves everything we've given him so far! He has had:

Rice cereal
Avocados
Sweet potatoes
Squash
Peas
Bananas
Apples

Believe it or not, so far his favorite seems to be avocados! He tends to prefer things that are thicker in texture, like the cereal, avocados, and peas, over the runnier things, like squash and bananas. But he chows down on all of it, rarely does he not finish a meal.

He's eating solids with three meals a day now. With his breakfast bottle, he eats cereal. With his lunch bottle, he eats cereal and a vegetable. With his dinner bottle, he eats cereal, a fruit, and a vegetable. Such a big boy! We actually just got a high chair last week, and he ate in it for the first time today. Stay tuned for pictures. He LOVED sitting in it!

I'm having a lot of fun making his baby food, too. Not hard at all, and I'm saving us money! Just for fun, I thought I'd calculate the savings:

Apples: I bought 4 lbs. of apples for $1.24 (Insane deal at Wal-Mart!), from which I got about 34 oz. of baby food (2 ice cube trays + 1 jar). In order to get 34 oz., I would've had to buy 14 jars of baby food. At $0.34 each, that would come to $4.76. So I saved $3.52.

Squash: I bought 2 butternut squash for $1.98, from which I got about 50 oz. of baby food (3 ice cube trays + 1 jar). In order to get 50 oz., I would've had to buy 20 jars of baby food, which would cost $6.80. So I saved $4.82. *Side note: I had no idea the squash would yield this much baby food... He's going to have to eat squash 4 times a week for the next 3 months in order to eat it before it goes bad in the freezer!

Peas: I bought 1 bag of frozen peas for $0.98. I only used half the bag on baby food, so that was $0.49 spent on baby food, from which I got about 16 oz. of baby food (1 ice cube tray). In order to get 16 oz., I would've had to buy 6.5 jars of baby food, which would cost $2.21. So I saved $1.72.

Bananas: Bananas are kind of hard to compute, since the price is always changing. Plus, I don't premake baby food with them - I just mash 1/4 of a banana when it's time for him to eat it, and he eats it fresh. However, that means that he gets 4 meals out of 1 banana, and since he gets 2 meals out of each jar of baby food, I can at least make some kind of comparison. Today I spent $2 on 7 bananas, which would make 28 meals for Elias. In order to get 28 meals, I would have to buy 14 jars of baby food, which would cost $4.76. So that means I saved $2.76.

That's all I can compute since they don't sell avocado baby food in a jar, and the other things I haven't made in bulk to freeze yet. So I'm having fun, saving money, and Elias is growing like crazy!

Rice Cereal!

My cutie boy got his first taste of rice cereal today! We've been changing his schedule (dropping the 10pm dream feed), so I decided to wait to start the cereal until we got that set. But he's been on the new schedule since Friday (Now he sleeps from 8:30pm to 7am!), so today we went for it! It was fun!! He did alright with it - wasn't sure exactly what was going on, and was impatient to just finish his meal already! But he did great opening his mouth for the spoon, and I think he swallowed most of what I put in his mouth. So I'll keep it up one meal a day for a little while and see how it goes! Here are a few pics of the occasion for your enjoyment.