i suck at blogging, yo

Posted on June 3, 2010 by Candy

I need to get back into the swing. We’ve been out of town for the last two weekends. A series of events has made those trips VERY stressful! We are all ready to have a weekend at home, chilled out and having some nice family time. It is supposed to be hot and sunny, so I am seeing some swimming fun in our near future. Here are some quick updates from my absence:

Zoey is starting to RUN. Well, “baby run” that is. In the last 24 hours, she has become WAY TOO CONFIDENT FOR HER OWN GOOD. It stresses this Mama out beyond belief. She is everywhere!
Grandma taught Zoey to say “uh oh” over the weekend and she says it in the proper context now. It is adorable when she drops something, falls down or purposely throws something and then says “Uh oh!”.. Melts my heart!
She mimics you when you sneeze by making a “shhppfffhggfffshhhh” sound from her mouth. It is adorable too. Did I mention that I think every single thing she does is adorable? Even pooping, yes!
My right foot is acting up bad. It is tingly and achey. I’m guessing a pinched nerve in my leg or spine. Sucks! I need to see a doctor but I keep putting it off.
Summer is here! It is consistently 90-95 degrees here every day. Yowza. My body is still trying to adjust to sweating every time I step a foot outside.
Zoey LOVES red grapes. I am scared to DEATH of choking, so I cut each grape into TWELVTHS. No, I am not even kidding! I cut a grape in half and then cut each half into sixths. Yes, I am overly paranoid. So what! Grapes are on the top list of choking hazards for kids/babies. Don’t judge me!

Well, my little peanut should be waking from her nap soon. Better go get her lunch ready. After lunch I think we are gonna throw a suit on and go outside for some pool fun.

Just let her do it!

Posted on March 8, 2010 by Candy

The thought of my daughter learning to spoon feed herself gives me small coronaries. The more I think about it, the more I get until I am in a full blown heart attack. The mess that goes along with learning to spoon feed yourself is a given and I know you know exactly what I am talking about. But, if there is one thing I am learning as a parent, it is that sometimes you just have to live in the moment and let them get messy. Sometimes you have to ignore the pretty white shirt that just got splattered with spaghetti sauce or the adorable pants that just became victim of a blow out.

So when I made spaghetti last night I decided that I would strip Zoey down and let her have at it. I mean, what is more fun that making a mess and eating spaghetti?

She loved it! As soon as I put the tray down with the cut up spaghetti noodles and sauce on it, she started hitting the tray like a wild maniac. Noodles were flying everywhere. She would pick noodles up by the handful and throw them or drop them on the floor. And…

That was the happiest dog in the universe last night. She sat there, patiently attentive. Waiting. Yearning. Begging. PLEASE DROP MORE!

I had to spoon a few noodles into her mouth so she would realize that this is stuff that you can not only play with but also EAT! And YUM! It is delicious! Once she had a bite, she realized what it was and started eating them. It took some serious concentration and a level of hand eye coordination that she didn’t even know she was capable of but she would eventually get a noodle into her mouth. I even witnessed her splurping a few noodles up.. I had no idea she knew how to slurp a noodle! And by the way, slurping noodles is annoying and I hate when I hear people do it.. but when my sweet peanut is doing it, it is the cutest thing ever :)

You know, it is a little more challenging these days to feed her. We don’t give her baby puree very often anymore and I try to give her whatever we are having for dinner. Making sure she is getting a healthy, well balanced diet is not an easy task. I’m sure it would be easier if I was making sure my husband and I were always getting a well balanced diet but sometimes it is hard to remember to take care of yourself when you are so busy taking care of someone else.

Zoey’s Firsts: Blowing on food

Posted on January 16, 2010 by Candy

I have really started to incorporate regular table food into Z’s diet. I try to give her whatever we are eating for dinner in addition to her baby food puree. She is loving all kinds of things from peas, bread, stove top stuffing, mashed potatoes to little nibbles of hamburger or chicken. She smacks her gums and “chews” everything up very well. She has only turned down one thing and it was when I added a little bit too much oatmeal to her butternut squash and she didn’t care for the taste too much. I snuck the bites in with something else and she did end up eating it all. I honestly can’t blame her because that oatmeal smells pretty rancid and I always add it to her food but usually only add a very little amount.

When I give her table food, I have this habit of blowing profusely on the food until I know it is for sure cooled down on the outside and the inside of whatever it is. I guess over the last few weeks she has been paying attention because today I went to give her a bite of stovetop stuffing and she “blew” on the spoon before allowing me to put it in her mouth. It was the cutest thing in the entire world!! I did it a few more times and she would “blow” (I put that in quotes because she doesn’t know exactly how to blow yet but makes a pbblltt type sound with her lips) on the spoon before opening her mouth. Soooo stinkin’ adorable!!

This is just proof that her little mind is already very sponge-like. She is watching every little thing we do and absorbing so much at such a young age.

I also forgot to write up a post about how my little peanut turned 9 months old two days ago! I can’t believe it has been 9 months since she has been in our lives. Amazing!! This has been, by far, the best time of my life. Now we will start the great First Birthday planning!

Zoey: 33 Weeks Old!

Posted on December 8, 2009 by Candy

Notice anything different?

It’s the ears! This morning we took Zoey to the doctor’s office to have her ears pierced. The doctor we saw was really nice and explained everything about the procedure in great detail. Gene held some little cotton swabs of some kind of liquid on her ear lobes for a few minutes, this was numbing the surface of her ears. I realize this wasn’t going to really take all of the pain away but I figured my job as a parent was to do whatever I could to make it as painless as possible. She came in, cleaned her ears, marked them with a marker, I checked the markings to make sure they were even and then we proceeded.

I figured Zoey would be more comfortable in our arms than with a nurse holding her down so I held her on my lap while Gene held her head in place. She started to cry before we even started, I think from being held down. The doctor did one ear at a time and it was over. She cried briefly and by time we were leaving the office she was happy and smiling. She just looks so precious :)

The earrings are a new kind of earring that is made from plastic so it’s completely non-allergenic. You don’t have to turn the earrings all of the time and you don’t have to put peroxide on them anymore. Great!! Less maintenance. All she said was to wash them with soap when you give her a bath and turn it a little when you do that. After 6 weeks we will need to change out the earrings into regular ones as the post on these are a little bigger than regular ones. She is doing GREAT and has been a gem all day today.

She has been acting her normal self but I noticed her face was warm today so I took her temperature and it was 100.5! She has been trying to eat EVERYTHING today, drooling a bit more than usual and she has had a really awful diaper rash the last few days so I am guessing that maybe she is teething. Her gums have been swollen for months now but I haven’t felt anything popping through so who knows! Gene slathered her poor red bottom up with Eucerin and put her in a disposable diaper for the night. I’ll put her back in cloth tomorrow morning and try to change her diaper every hour so that she isn’t sitting in a wet diaper for a long period of time. She cried so hard when I was wiping her bottom tonight. That totally broke my heart and I felt so awful :( It was a worse cry than when she had her ears pierced this morning!

Zoey has been drinking four 7oz bottles a day for a few months now but this last week has gone down to about three 6oz bottles a day. So crazy. She is still only eating 2 solids a day but I am starting to incorporate bananas and cheerios into her diet. Yesterday she ate almost an entire small banana!

Well.. I better get to bed. I need to work on some knitting and try to get mentally prepared for the next couple of days. I am going to be trying to clean my house in the next couple of days as we will be having family visiting this weekend for our family Christmas. I’m so excited to see everyone that I haven’t seen in so long!

I’m here… but not.

Posted on November 25, 2009 by Candy

My back has flared up again. I am having trouble doing every day things but I am trying to get by. There are moments through the day where I feel hopeless and down in the dumps but luckily those are few and far between. I try to keep my spirits up and am trying to take care of myself. Trying to eat less and get some walks in whenever the weather isn’t too cold. I know losing some weight will make me feel better so I am starting that journey.

We took Z to a new pediatrician today. I liked my old one but just didn’t feel like we were getting enough time and attention in the appointments. I actually took her to my pediatrician! The same guy that I saw from birth to about 18 years old when they finally kicked me out and told me I was too old to be seeing a pediatrician. We introduced Z to him and they gave her the other half of her seasonal flu shot. All in all, it was an excellent appointment! She’ll go back next month for the other half of her N1H1 vaccine and then we’ll see them again in January for her 9 month well baby check up.

Z is doing wonderful. She is such a fun and happy baby. Always smiling and laughing. The only time she ever cries is if she gets too hungry or when we put her down for naps or to bed at night. She has learned at a very early age that going to bed is For The Birds. She will usually fall asleep pretty quickly after putting her down. She also still needs a pacifier when going down for naps and bed which kind of bothers me but we still have a few more months before we really need to start the weaning process.

Oh and one new thing is that Z looooves cheerios or puffs. I’ve been giving her the puffs but I realized I could just as easily (and much much cheaper) give her Cheerios! She is still working on her coordination to get them into her mouth so only a few ever actually make it to her mouth (lucky Emma gets all the goodies that fall from the high chair!) which causes the OCD in me to kick in and start hand feeding them to her. I know she needs to learn and I try to stop myself from doing it but I wont lie, sometimes I just can’t help myself.

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving!! I am really excited for Thanksgiving dinner and just spending time at my parent’s house. I’ll be honest, when I first moved out of the house and into an apartment with Gene, it didn’t feel like “home.” I still felt like I wanted to be at my parent’s house a lot. Don’t get me wrong, I loved being able to share a life with him but I just didn’t have that warm home feeling that I did at my parent’s house. So anyway, give or take 5ish years later and I really feel like our home is “home.” I think the day that happened was the day that we bought this house. And I actually like being at my house. I like everything about it and I really feel like THIS is home now. But I also love going back to my parent’s house and hanging out there because in the bottom of my heart, that will always be home.

On that note, I’ll leave you with a picture of my little peanut. Doncha just love her cloth diaper? Too cute to put pants over!

Nap time is a bust!

Posted on November 18, 2009 by Candy

Today has not been a good Napping Type Of Day, if ya know what I mean. She took a good 2 hour nap this morning and has been down for a good hour now but during both naps, she has woken up crying several times and I’ve had to shush her back to sleep. I don’t know if she is having some nightmares/terrors or what. Poor little baby!

I forgot to mention that Z has her first cold. Well, it’s not officially diagnosed by a PhD, just your typical Mother’s Intuition Diagnosis. She sounds like a loud purring kitten when she breathes. She will cough from time to time to clear it out of her throat. She had a little bit of a runny nose this morning but I haven’t seen anything since then. She seems to sleep well (silently, no congestion) after we put a cool mist humidifier in her room. She is acting mostly her normal, happy self so I don’t think she is miserable.

As far as food goes, she has been so great with eating solids. So far she has tried sweet potatoes, butternut squash, apples, carrots, peas, green beans and banana and has liked all of it. The green beans took a couple of days for her to get used to but everything else she has loved. She especially likes it when I mix the butternut squash with apples. I’ve started giving her some of those “puffs” cereal pieces to work on her fine motor skills.. She is starting to get the thumb & index finger “pincer” grab down.. But still has some trouble with it. I tried giving her some peas and carrots cut up really small and she likes those too. She grabs the peas and they just squish in her hands and then she has trouble getting it into her mouth so I put the pieces on a spoon and spoon feed them to her.

Otherwise, things are fine here. Today I am having trouble getting anything done because all I can think about is poor Anissa and her family :( If you pray, please pray and if you don’t, please send good vibes or whatever it is that you do. Anissa needs it right now and her family needs it as well. When tragic things happen to fellow bloggers the whole blogosphere pulls together to unite and bring strength to friends and family. It’s amazing and so beautiful. Thinking of you today Anissa.. My heart is heavy and I am sending so many well wishes to you and your family.

A Parenting WIN!

Posted on November 5, 2009 by Candy

I need to start writing more, even if they aren’t Academy Award Winning Posts. I need to document the little things Zoey does so I can look back on them and remember it all. I’ve focused so much on living in the moment that I have forgotten to write stuff down.

So anyway, right now Zoey is sitting on her own. She’s been sitting on her own since right around when she turned 6 months old. She was super fussy the week of Oct 20th and I didn’t know WHAT was going on. I seriously wanted whoever stole my sweet daughter to please return her to me and take this Devil Child away. It lasted about 3 days and then voila! All back to normal. I guess in hindsight I am noticing it had to have been the shots that day that turned her into the Devil Child.

So far she hasn’t rejected any of the food we’ve given her. She has had peas, carrots, apples, sweet potatoes and butternut squash. I make all of her food and I love doing it! I have given her some jarred baby food from the store when we’re out or out of town.. but I love giving her stuff that I’ve made because I know exactly how it’s been prepared!

This morning I was on my way home from the Chiropractor and I know she was tired because she was sitting in her car seat making a wide variety of noises. Mostly yelling and shouting. Not screaming/crying, just making very loud squeeling noises, which she tends to do when she is really sleepy and fighting The Sleep Monster. As I turned into our neighborhood entrance, I heard some very serious grunting noises and then looked back and she had passed out! Right as I was turning into our drive way!! Grrr. I hate that. So I carried my crap in the house and then went out to get her out of the seat. I tried to gently carry her into her crib and successfully got her down without waking her up.. And man she reeks of poop! But if you think I’m gonna wake my sleeping daughter up to change a poopy diaper, you got another thing comin’! It is kind of chilly this morning, so I figured maybe it will keep her warm.. Ha! Parenting WIN!

So I’ve got the windows open, the blinds open.. the house is bright and sunshiney and I feel good again!

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Category Archives: Baby Food