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 especial

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

In my previous post I wrote about the other things around our house that have switched to reusable rather than disposable, in addition to diapers. In comments, Ann reminded me that of course tissues can be reusable too. I had two pair of pajama pants, totally worn out in the seams around the butt, that were ready to be re-purposed. So this weekend I went ahead and cut them up, folded them kleenex-box style, and put them into an empty box. This way they pull out one after the other just like paper tissues! I am quite proud of myself. It took about 30 minutes to do the cutting and folding, total, with a few breaks for baby tending. I didn't serge or stitch the edges, so will see how they hold up after a washing and might have to do that later. The thing that makes me extra excited about using my old pjs, besides not having to buy fabric, is that these were both super worn, so already very soft and thin, just how I like my tissues. In the past, I've gotten annoyed with the bulk o

We all know that I am a cloth diaper evangelist . Well, I have been thinking, since I love cloth diapers, are there other disposable items I'm using that could easily be replaced with a better, re-usable alternative? Hmm. A short list of the obvious: napkins (duh) paper towels “feminine hygiene products” a.k.a. mama cloth, pads, etc. for mama’s cycles In my experience, the cloth versions of these all work better, are more attractive, and are healthier than the disposable alternative. And that is BESIDES the fact that they are all obviously better for the environment! (See here for or here for some explanations of why.) Yet, companies keep on coming out with more and more throw-away products. There definitely are disposable things that I like to use, and probably will continue to do so, such as... Well, I actually can't think of any good examples right now. But I'm not going to stop buying groceries at a grocery store, for now, so let's say, the pack

So, in my previous post I may have used some phrases like "quite easy" and "went wonderfully." I have been thinking about my wording and realized that the real experience might not have been accurately expressed. It's just that compared to my worries, and compared to daily life with a baby, it wasn't bad. Everything in life is relative, and life with a baby changes constantly because your baby is constantly changing. When sweet pea was maybe 6-8 weeks old, and slept for 6 hours straight for the first time in her life, that seemed like the easiest night ever! Then she slept for 8 hours, then 10 at around 4 months, and I was like "hey this parenting thing is a breeze! We're sleeping!" Then she started waking up at night again, and even though I am getting more total sleep than during the 6 hours straight time, it feels a little harder. To be honest and fair, here are some of the hard times that we had on our trip: On the drive back from a day of

Last week we took a trip across the country, by car and airplane. This was sweet pea's first flight. We went for a family reunion and had a fabulous time seeing everyone and showing off our baby. Everything went wonderfully, until the flight home when she cried for about an hour straight. Luckily the plane was filled with families so hopefully most people didn't hate us and had some sympathy instead. I don't know if it was the pressure change, or too much time on laps in one place, or the dry yucky air, but she was not happy. She did finally fall asleep, and then also slept for most of the 2+ hour drive home from the airport, luckily! The time change seems to be totally fine, coming west. Now we have our first cross-country trip under our belts and I feel much more confident. Flying with a baby was really quite easy (except for the crying part). The airlines will check a car seat for no charge, even when they charge for everything else. They even give you a plastic bag to p

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It is August of our first summer of gardening. I don't really count the occasional vegetable I was able to coax out of the clay-ey soil at our old rental house as real gardening. By this time in past years the plants would be next to dead, and the plot would be full of weeds. I always gave up somewhere around halfway through the summer, usually when I went out of town for a few days, then came back and was busy for a while, so neglected the plants for two or so weeks, and then it all looked like too much work to get things back to a manageable, healthy, state. So, it is a huge accomplishment to have made it to August with all of our plants (pretty much) still alive and producing. Being out of town for the past week could have been a big hardship for our garden, but it has come through nicely, in my opinion, with the aid of our lovely house-sitter. The worst part of being gone from our garden is the over-sized unappetizing vegetables. You saw what happened with the zucchinis last t

Follow-up to my previous post . Reasons why this may not be a good blog name: It’s too long! It’s silly It doesn’t clearly describe what this blog is about Hmm, so which is it? A bad name or a good one? You tell me.

So, in my “ First Post ” I said that I picked the name of my blog randomly from a list I’d brainstormed. That’s not quite true. I actually made a long list of possible names, and then finally came up with one that I liked, and went with it. While it was not exactly a random choice, I didn’t put massive amounts of time into thinking it through. Now that I’ve committed to it I think I really do like it. (If I don’t, I can always start a new one, right? It only took about 5 minutes to set this up.) The reasons I think this name works for me: It has my new nickname, and my daughter’s top nickname It expresses the idea that this is something that I’m creating, or “making” My daughter does have to be included in this because much of what I plan to write about is inspired by her, and she has to give me the time to write for it for it to work It somewhat obscures my identity for public readers who don’t know me and might want to someday look me up and stalk me and my family (that’s assuming th

This is a follow-up to my post on cloth diapering . For those of you who read that one, you may be wondering why I chose to launder my own instead of using a diaper service, as many people suggested. You can find a diaper service in most cities in the U.S. I am very glad they exist because I think they get some people to try out the cloth lifestyle who otherwise would be too intimidated, or who hate doing laundry, or just want to make things easier on themselves. These are all totally reasonable reasons to use a service. I have heard other people say that the diaper service was such a blessing, and I don't blame or look down upon them. Personally, however, I prefer washing my own rather than paying someone else. Ready for another list? The reasons I wash my own instead of helping someone else earn a living on poopy diapers: I control the substances used on my diapers. Some diaper services use bleach, which has environmental drawbacks, and some babies have bleach or laundry deterg

Last week my husband and I, and a good friend, made a lot of jam. We picked the fruits and berries ourselves, and stayed up late two nights to get everything properly processed. Now we have stacks of cute jars to use all year and give as gifts for any occasion. For this post, I decided to write the six steps to a fun and successful jam-making experience. Pickin' Find a local u-pick farm, a neighborhood berry patch (blackberries grow in abandoned lots and along alleys all over the Pacific NorthWest), or grow your own. I had a hard time figuring out where to go at first, but found a helpful website . My friend and I picked cherries for less than two hours, and got over 30 pounds of cherries! Then we had to pit them all, ugh. Picking is very enjoyable when you're chatting with a friend, and taking time to appreciate the beautiful bounty around you. We also made pepper jelly with peppers that we grew, which is extra satisfying. Preparin' Get your fruits ready to cook. For che