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There She Grows

Lilah and I both love dried-fruit chips and we buy them often. But such small amounts really seem expensive at the store, especially considering how ludicrously easy it is to make big batches of fruit chips at home! At least with apples and pears, using this no-brainer method I saw at weelicious.com.

We used apples only because I had a giant bag of them laying around. Using a sharp knife or an even handier mandoline, slice the fruit super-thin and arrange the slices in a single layer onto silpats or cookie sheets lined with parchment paper. Dusting them with cinnamon is entirely optional. They taste great without it, but Lil enjoyed doing it.

Then bake at 250º for 1 hour, turning them over halfway through. Once you take them out, let them sit for 10 minutes for optimal crunchiness. (Thicker slices require longer cooking and longer resting time). Watch these healthy nutritious chips disappear in record speed.

Pre-school is currently closed for a summer break. Which has left me devoid of work time and searching for new ways to keep Lil entertained indoors, avoiding the heat wave and wildfire ash showers. Daddy’s birthday was Friday, so Thurs seemed like a good time to try making sugar cookies with Lil.   I figured the activity could fill a portion of our day plus it would be a nice gift for Daddy.

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On Memorial Day, we did something we haven’t really done before. We had a big BBQ in our backyard and invited a ton of people from various facets of our lives. Aside from Lilah’s birthday party, I don’t think we’ve ever had a gathering of this size at our place. I feel as though I’ve been putting off doing something like this for far too long so we just went for it. Our yard is finally at the point where I am ok with entertaining back there. We had a bunch of Mike’s friends, lots of my friends, we had our single friends AND some of my “mommy” friends along with their kids. This mix of folks was the very definition of worlds colliding…and it felt really good. Read the rest of this entry »

Sara had to check out some of Griffith Park’s kid attractions for a class she’s taking. She needed a test subject and Lilah was more than happy to oblige. Here’s a rundown of our fun day!

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For awhile Lil has been interested in feeding herself with her own spoon but its been quite a mess for the most part, until just recently. She seems to have turned a corner these last couple weeks and has become much better at it. She keeps the spoon facing upwards now, and most of the food actually ends up in her mouth instead of all over her clothes and the floor. Its quite liberating to be able to serve her a bowl of applesauce or yogurt and  not have to spoon feed every bite.  If I even try to do that she gets extremely annoyed, so I guess thats officially over.

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Bacon has clearly been enjoying a boon in trendy popularity as people continue to find more things to infuse with it. I’m certainly not complaining. The other day I surprised Mike with a bacon chocolate bar. The verdict:  interesting but kind of weird. The bacon provides a nice saltiness to the sweet chocolate, but a rather odd texture.

What merited a blog post is not the chocolate but the gratuitious text printed on the wrapper by  Katrina of Vosages Haut-Chocolat. I had to share.  Note that this is only a snippet from the full text.

..It was only a matter of time. What began as a love of salt and sweet quickly unravelled into an obsession. No longer could I wait to unveil the royal coupling in solid bar form…

Breathe…engage your 5 senses, close your eyes and inhale deeply. Be in the present moment, notice the color of the chocolate, the glossy shine. Rub your thumb over the chocolate bar to release the aromas of smoked applewood bacon flirting with deep milk chocolate. Snap off just a tiny piece and place it in your mouth. Let the lust of salt and sweet coat your tongue…

geez…get a room.

lilah loves to eat food.  she tries almost anything and what she likes,  she devours in large quantities.     she has had some tried and true favorites since the start, but other likes and dislikes have already changed.    lately lilah has been pushing way green veggies,  until i realized she will eagerly consume chopped spinach when its scrambled with eggs or in spanikopita.

lilah  is very specific about what she wants, and knows the words for tons of basic foods.   some of the foods lilah can say (and often specifically requests):  chicken (which she also calls buck-buck), turkey, yogurt, applesauce (which she calls a’sauce), cracker, cookie, beans, hummus, egg, tomato (’mato), potato, banana, peach, berry, grape (pake), orange, apple, bread, cereal, cheese, peas, puff (puffed-rice is a puff), O’s (cheerios), tuna (nuna),  and a pasta salad that she calls nuna-pasta.    she knows and loves pasta, and also calls it macaroni when appropriate.      for a 16 month old, lilah has a surprising amount of 3 and 4 syllable words under her belt.

lilah was always a good eater, but during her ill and teething month it was difficult to get her to eat much of anything.  now her appetite is back in full force, seemingly more so than before to make up for lost time.  also, because she’s still getting over this cold i’ve stopped  milk almost entirely for now.    she just starts coughing up like crazy after a single sip.   probably this new drop in milk is also causing her to eat way more food. either way,  the kid chows.  she is what my mom’s family calls a marabunta.

its been 2 months since i reported on lilah’s milk drinking habits, and much has changed. here’s some updated news.

since the initial unpleasantness, lilah began drinking soy milk.   then i began hearing more and more about the estrogen content, and that some children experienced hormonal issues from drinking too much soy.  concerned, i talked to our nurses, who basically confirmed this as a possibility.   they still didn’t seem to think it was a big deal as long as i limited her to 20 oz a day.  but hearing this freaked me out, and i wanted to gradually move her toward cow’s milk. unfortunately, lilah again threw up after a few ounces.

i then discovered kefir.  its basically yogurt in liquid form, with all those good antibodies and bacteria cultures.  thick, serious stuff.  i started giving lilah one bottle a day of watered-down kefir and she loved it. almost immediately after introducing this small amount, lilah had a huge growth spurt.   i began to realize, she really needed more calories than she was getting from the soy.   i felt angry that initially the nurses had assured me soy milk was sufficient for weaning. even though lilah was getting plenty of calcium and nutrients from the variety of healthy foods she ate, the soy milk was not gonna cut it.

after about 2 weeks i decided the kefir was not enough; i want this kid to have milk and have it now.   so i gave whole milk lactaid a try – and i have no idea why it took me so long. lilah took to it immediately and has grown leaps and bounds since.  almost overnight she grew out of her size 3 diapers and a ton of her clothes.  she needed a new wardrobe, stat!  i felt so happy that she was finally getting the nutrition she had been lacking.  and right around that time was when she started to walk!  hooray for lilah.

for the past month, lactaid has been wonderful for us. sooner or later i wanted to re-introduce regular cow’s milk again but was afraid. no one wants to make their baby sick, so i kept putting it off. but the last time i ran out i found the store was out of lactaid – and that quarter gallon of vitamin D was staring me in the face. i figured, what the heck, lets give it a monthly try. yesterday i tentatively gave her 4 oz.  she downed it quickly and demanded more. whats this 4 oz bs, mom?! there were no signs of shaking or sickness to speak of.  after a few minutes of her seeming fine and hungry, i gave her more.  i am pleased to announce there were no problems whatsoever.   so now lilah is finally drinking her whole milk!  and is aparently not (or no longer) lactose intolerant. hooray!

the other day lilah and i helped kat make preserves out of her backyard plums. helped as in, we stood around and ate plums while she stirred.

this is the first time Lilah has eaten an entire piece of fruit on her own without me cutting it. she has some serious choppers on the top and bottom now, and getting good at using them. it was ripe, juicy and the perfect size for baby’s hands.

unfortunately i was not prepared for how quickly and easily she devoured this. next thing i knew the whole thing was gone, including the pit, and she was asking for more. it was small but i panicked. called the doctor even, just to make sure her little digestive system could handle such a thing. they assured me it was going to be okay, that the pit would come out just fine in the next day or two. they said it probably wouldn’t even hurt her. well, i never noticed it but and i assume it has by now. it hasn’t been heard from since, so i guess all is fine.

i have started to give lilah soy milk and she LOVES it. the doctors have given me the go-ahead to wean her to soy milk. now that she has a milk alternative that she loves to drink and that never makes her feel ill, i am suddenly feeling like this weaning process is going to be finished by the end of the month! i’ve already put her to bed after a soymilk bottle for the last two nights, in lieu of nursing. she seems to have gone down to bed very easily and slept great both times. suweet.

i’m not sure what is up with Lilah and dairy.  I tried yogurt again to see if i could use it as a calcium source, even though she had always always rejected it.  but this time I tried greek-style yogurt.  she ate the entire container.  so i guess she is not lactose intolerant after all.     maybe she’ll grow to like milk one day but for now i’m just so glad the soy is working out so well.

there are some pesky articles out there about the dangers of soy. i think i may call the doc just to have them reassure me ONE more time that this is really ok. and then there are the articles that claim i am going to gain back all the pregnancy weight i lost, once breastfeeding is over. that’ll be fun.

when karen was in town, we went to a joint in little tokyo and baby ate shumai like it was going out of style. then we went out for proper sushi the next night, and she could not get enough spicy tuna. she also ate a lot of crab! she seemed to like that and edamame more than the halibut.

in general i am quite proud of the wide array of flavors my kid eats. she has always enjoyed food eagerly, but lately i have been more adventurous in what i offer her, with pleasing results. we ordered the jerk chicken pizza from cha cha cha, and it had quite a kick! but lilah has been eating the leftovers of that treat for the last two days. and there was so much pasta salad left over from lil’s birthday that i’ve been offering it as finger food. she’s liked pasta for ages, but i noticed that her favorite parts of the salad were the peppers and the black olives.

its very exciting to me that she can now pretty much eat whatever we eat. the doc said that all foods are fair game. music to lilah’s ears! to date, the only foods we’ve had trouble giving are dairy. tried cottage cheese this morning; denied. still dislikes yogurt. i’ve gradually been trying to re-introduce the whole milk by using it in her morning oatmeal instead of water. she has definitely been less inclined to eat the cereal this way. in general she still enjoys her oatmeal, but occasionally i offer her scrambled eggs for breakfast. now that i see what a palatte she has, i  unabashedly mix polenta and soyrizo into them and we both enjoy it. she can’t get enough.

pics from karen and david’s recent visit .

lilah is now a year old! and my goal is to wean her by the end of august. 14 months is a good long time for nursing. i am starting now, so that i can ease her off the breast very slowly. no cold turkey for this kid. she loves nursing so much i know this one will be a challenge.

so at her 12 month appointment the other day, the doc confirmed what i’d been reading: start by replacing one daytime feeding with a bottle of whole milk. gradually, feedings will be replaced by milk and probably the ‘most important’ feedings will be the last to go. for us, that is the first feeding in the morning and the last one at night.

so anyway, yesterday i chose an arbitrary afternoon time when lilah was hungry, and offered her a bottle of milk. she has always taken bottles with no problem, so i knew that would be easy. as soon as she saw me take the bottle out of the cabinet she was excited and wanted it. but, she had never had cows milk before. when i first tried dairy products (cheese, yogurt, etc), she took awhile to become acclimated to it. the first few times she had thrown up and rejected it entirely. but now she’s enjoying cheese a lot, its one of her favorite snacks. so i hoped dairy in general was no longer an issue.

i offered her 2 oz of milk, and she started off guzzling it down happily. but an ounce and a half in, she pushed it away angrily and kept turning to the breast, demanding to nurse. i felt bad and did not stick to my guns; instead i offered the breast for her to finish her feeding.

but that did not make her any happier. in fact, this began an hour of lilah being more inconsolably miserable than she has ever been before! usually, even at her angriest, if she is picked up and walked around, lilah becomes satiated. usually she just wants to be carried. well that wasn’t cutting it this time. i tried everything but she was miserable, and i could tell she really wasn’t feeling well. she kept having these weird hiccups and breathing funny, between screams. another clue was the fact that she threw up 3 times. poor thing, i felt awful! i had given her something that made her really sick!

finally she calmed down, after a really really REALLY long time of being angry and hurting. it was then time for her dinner so i sat her in her high chair and offered an array of foods she typically loves. i couldn’t get her to eat a thing. she clearly still felt yucky and food did not appeal to her. when she doesn’t eat well at dinner, she doesn’t sleep through the night. so i knew we had a long night ahead of us.

needless to say, her first milk experience was NOT a good one. what an ordeal! it was discouraging as far as weaning. i had hoped to bypass formula entirely and go straight to milk. i have a total aversion to formula for some reason, and perhaps i should rethink that because its looking like i may need to seek its help if i plan to wean this child in the near future. i’m going to try the whole milk again – in a much smaller amount (1/4 an oz, maybe? lol) but i’m too afraid to do it today. maybe next week. :/

this morning i realized we were all out of the cereals that typically make up the centerpiece of lilah’s breakfasts. and i didn’t feel like making cream of wheat either. so i figured, now is as good a time as any to give her some eggs.

she’s had eggs in teeny amounts before (scraps from our plates when we’re out at restaurants) and seemed intrigued. so today i scrambled up two eggs with a small bit of polenta, and she gobbled it up like crazy. she loved it! she also ate apricot-apple sauce and of course the everpresent cheerios.

hours later she appears to be totally fine.   so i guess i don’t have to worry about making her an egg-free birthday cake after all!

some time has passed since that intial epic fail, so i have been trying to re-introduce dairy in small quanities. all babies i meet apparently love yogurt and their moms swear by it, so i started there again. our doc told me that yobaby was actually a sugar-laden ‘joke’ so i got a tub of whole milk yogurt from whole foods. what a waste; baby is still not a fan, although she did manage to down a few fruit-sweetened spoonfuls without the exorcist-style vomiting. so that was some progress! regardless, the majority of the tub ended up down the drain.

i have also tried small pieces of string cheese as a snack. she’ll eat a couple but much prefers her tried and true favorites: cheerios, rice and corn puffs, banana, dried fruits, bread. again no vomiting though… so its looking like she is not allergic. now the trick is to get her more interested. who doesn’t like cheese?

i even tried macaroni and cheese. baby has already shown a liking of pasta. the first time she ate small slices of rotini, it was leftovers from our adult meal and had the remnants of a rather spicy sauce. she surprised us both by quickly downing as much as she could, with glee. i guess our baby likes flavorful food, so perhaps the mac and cheese last night was simply too boring. needless to say, i don’t think she actually swallowed a single piece although many were in her mouth at some point. she would scoop up handfuls and smash them in, only to spit them right back out or remove them with her hands and toss them to the floor with utter disdain. marley had a field day scouring this rare treat from beneath the high chair, often getting new falling pieces stuck in her fur while doing so. what a mess! and a waste of perfectly good mac & cheese. i guess she takes after her dad in her dislike of this delicacy. they’re both crazy.

i’ll post about our vegas trip soon.

we had this awesome chicco high chair that was supposed to be super rad, but lilah never really took to it. so mostly she ate in her bebepod. well i was tired of doing that, and thought she might like this simple little ikea high chair because its kind of similar in its simplicity.

she loves it! it doesn’t have any of the bells and whistles of the nicer chair, but it allows her to sit straight up and eat off a tray which is all she really cares about.

once in awhile, roman comes over to play with marley if he notices us outside in the afternoon. and the other night, he fed lilah her dinner. i told him that when he is a teenager, we are going to call on him to babysit lilah. he asked me what we would be doing that night. he’s 9 now, so we have a long time to make plans.