Food for Thought

Here is an interesting quote I found:

                Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity. ~Voltaire

I don't know if you remember back to a certain blog post about how B had such a difficult time learning how to breastfeed. And then how he seemed to hate everything about it; the boob and the woman it was attached to, beating them up as hard as he could while trying to consume his dinner. Hardly a pleasure for mom or baby.

Yeah, well, enter a new bit of ammunition to the fight: FOOD.

Real, solid food. Food that you could offer to any grown-up human being (well, as long as they don't mind puree).

Here is a breakdown of how it's going so far:

Delivery:

Here, Mommy! Let me help you with that...

To give him credit, Bradley has gotten much better in the breastfeeding realm of things. He stopped beating me up eventually, and is obviously thriving, if that pot-belly is any indication. Just in time for me to start feeding him other things. Like rice cereal. Considering it took him over two months to adjust to feeding out of a breast, he's definitely done better with the spoon. It's been just over a month, and we've got the spoon-feeding thing pretty much down. He even attempts to help me by grabbing the spoon (and its contents) and cramming it into his mouth. Such a helpful boy!

Variety (or lack thereof):
We're not doing so awesome on the whole variety thing. So far, we've discovered that rice cereal bungs him up (so, no thank you, rice cereal). Oat cereal has been a favourite. Yams are the shiznit, and applesauce is tolerated only when we can't have yams. Carrots reduce my son to a whimpery, close-lipped mess; nectarines cause actual acts of violence to be committed (by my son, not me!!) and peas? Well, that was tolerated for two mouthfuls...maybe we'll have better luck today. Variety is apparently not the spice of life for my son. I can picture him going on a date when he's sixteen, ordering pureed yams with a side of applesauce, and his date looking intrigued but alarmed. Seriously B, we need to change things up...

Source:

Ta-daaaa!

I make my own baby food. Call me cheap, call me paranoid, but I just feel better about knowing what goes into my kid's food. If I didn't wash the carrots, that's my fault. And I did wash them, just so you know. The making of the food is actually kinda fun. There is something so satisfying about filling up a bunch of cute little jars with food you know is wholesome for your kid. There is also the excitement of shoveling the food you made into your kids waiting and open mouth, and the anticipation of his reaction. There is also something a little disheartening and downright maddening about seeing his little features screw up like he's just eaten the bitterest lemon of all time, and then watching as all your hard work gets shoved disdainfully out of his little mouth, the tiny lips clamping shut in all-out mutiny.

Mommy: Ok little beebee, it's time to try these yummy peas mama made for you! Mmmmm, all green and um...kind of electric-looking but oooooh yummy yummy, they're going to be good! That's it, open mouth...little darlin'....oooh, what a good boy you are!
Baby: Chew chew.....chew.............chew......eyes squint shut, face contorts...little pink tongue pushes green goo (diluted now) out of mouth...goo sludges down the chin...
Mommy: Now now, that's not how we eat our peas! Try again...scoops up green goo off baby's chin, adds fresh peas to the mix on the spoon...
Baby: Opens mouth to squawk about how much he hates peas and...
Mommy: Takes opportunity to shovel full spoon of pea/sludge mixture into baby's mouth... There you go, baby! That's a good boy! Opening your mouth for Mommy!
Baby: Realizing his mistake, shoves entire spoonful OUT of mouth with tiny but efficient pink tongue, clamps mouth shut...eyebrows go down in - what is that, anger?! - and procedes to make a series of angry noises, with mouth shut. Smart baby.
Mommy: Sigh. Baby: 1, Mommy: 0.

Please don't feed me peas again. Unless they are orange. And taste like yams.

So yeah. We'll keep on truckin' with the making of the baby food. At least I know it didn't cost much.

Frequency and Sleep:
I had to do a section on sleep...you know I did!

So at first, B was only eating one meal a day, late afternoon. It didn't affect his sleep and actually added nicely to our evening routine: B eats some kind of dinner, baths, breastfeeds, then goes to bed. Perfect.

Then he seemed to be smacking his lips in the morning before his nap, so I started feeding him before his nap. Well, all hell broke loose after that. We were napping for 30 minutes tops, and you all know what happens when Mommy doesn't get her time Bradley doesn't get his morning nap. It's not a pretty picture. So I stopped feeding him in the morning, and instead, fed him a meal after his morning nap. All went back to somewhat normal, and it's been great. Until yesterday. Now he wakes up from his nap an hour early because he's hungry. Not cool.

Conclusion? This whole latest adventure with food just re-enforces the thought that having a baby around (who inconveniently does NOT come with an instruction manual) is one big adventure. It's all trial and error. For someone like me, who likes things to be laid out and somewhat organized, planned with an accompanying list, this has been a bit of a hairy adventure so far, but I think it's teaching me that not everything fits neatly into the mold, and that I need to be a little more easygoing about the whole thing.

Heh heh...mold? What mold? Who needs a mold? I'm cute the way I am.

It's a good thing we get a year's maternity leave. I may need all of that time to figure Bradley out, because just when I think I've got him pegged, he changes it up. It certainly makes life very interesting. But it's been a pretty hilarious adventure so far too.

And with that, I'd better go warm up some peas. Bradley doesn't like his food cold...

Karma is a *B*

...and just so you know, Karma doesn't come in the form of the b!tch that many of you thought I meant with my title. Ha! No, Karma comes back to me in the form of my 5-month-old son. It just seems strange that anything I've said about him on this blog that may even resemble some form of bragging comes back to prove me wrong within the following week. Or weeks.

Sigh.

For example, when I said in another post that I had inadvertantly distanced myself from the mommy group I was attending by saying what surprised me most about motherhood was how well my baby was sleeping (HEY! Don't judge! They caught me off-guard!!), that very night, Bradley woke up at 5 and was hungry. For the first time in over a month. Yeah, Karma that night was my B.

Most recently, I wrote a blog about Bradley's naps and how he basically goes down without a peep most times. His morning naps have always been something I count on. Mommy time. When Bradley decides he doesn't want to sleep in the morning, my poor hubby comes home to a very grouchy mommy by the end of the workday. If two days go by and B doesn't get his morning naps, mommy is a sad cross between a neanderthal and someone who should be committed to the nearest nuthouse.

People, we are going on Day 6.

I. Am. Going. CrAzY! What has happened to my little, sleep-loving son??! It seems he has decided at the ripe old age of 5 months that naps "aren't his thing" and since he can't run amuck like the 2-year-old I spoke of in my last post, he squirms and writhes and flips all over his crib like a little fish, wrapping himself in his blanket like a little piece of sushi (but not a nice piece of sushi...one of the poorly wrapped ones at the cheap sushi places)...wailing and sucking his thumb and screaming intermittantly. It's awesome.

My little piece of poorly-wrapped sushi.
What kind of metaphor is that?! Poor kid.

Now some of you skeptics are saying to your screens, "Oh, just let him cry it out. It's a stage." No. No it's not just a stage. The action just crescendos and crescendos until it reaches a fevered pitch, and just when you think to yourself, Surely he is finished; this can't go on much longer. Who has the stamina for that? He answers you, I do! I do! I have more stamina than you have tolerance! Ha HAAAA! And I have to go in and get my son, pick him up, cuddle him, brush away his floods of tears and try over again, this time trying any new tactic I can to settle the poor kid down.

So NOW you're thinking, "Obviously he's not tired and is trying to drop a nap! Let it go, let it go." The thing is, eventually he DOES settle down, and sleeps soundly. The sleep is getting shorter (it used to be 2.5 hours) but it IS quality sleep.

And mommy needs a shower.

So we're not going to give up just yet.

And now, friends, I better go...for the baby still sleeps, and there are diapers to stuff, laundry to move, and a shower to be had.