Lessons In Parenting: First Solid Food Edition

1) No one tells you avocado will stain. Hence the amount of Shout! soaking into one of her my first Christmas bibs to attempt to get the vast quantity of green off of it from her Monday first adventure in avocado. 

2) No one tells you that feeding your baby solids will, strangely, cause them to nurse MORE, not less. I don't really mind this, as I am in no way ready to give up nursing Saoirse, but it surprised me. One would think food in tummy would equal less room for milk. This is apparently not true. I can only figure it must be a comfort thing as their tummies try to figure out what this new substance is.

 (After eating the last of her avocado from Monday-accessories by her aunt Hong/Ana-Cherie)

3) I knew this was coming, but gone is the ease of EBF diapers. Her poop is now not just liquid, it has texture. Which I find somewhat odd seeing as her baby food is just a fuzz thicker than milk. But such is the experience. Gonna steal one of those "should've been thrown away a while back" spatulas from the kitchen, replace it with a new one, and stick the old one in the bathroom for poop removal ease. 

I leave you with pictures from last night when we were visiting Joseph's parents' house. 

Playing with Mommy's iPhone camera

First Solid Food!

Yesterday (2/24), Saoirse got her first taste of something that wasn't liquid in nature. Not breastmilk, gripe water, or tylenol. Or simethicone. Yes, our bubble issues are great.

She FINALLY got to have something on her spoon.

 She was pretty thrilled by that idea.

Full of good fats and other things that are great for a baby's developing little brain, we chose avocado as her first solid food. Mashed up and diluted with water to make it a consistency she's a bit more familiar with.

Her daddy fed her first, as I'm generally the person behind the food. This gave him a chance to be in the thick of it. Saoirse loves spoons. She loves to play with them and is pretty good at getting them in her mouth. So this was a new experience, there being something on the spoon. And she was totally digging.

She was pretty thoroughly covered with it by the end. Her face and hands were green as she likes to grab the spoon. This picture was taken before everything was over. The bib was far more green by the time she was done, due to her method of attempting to suck the food off of the spoon. But she didn't do the fairly standard 'sputter-food-out' thing. That pretty spectacular tongue thrust reflex is long gone. 

Afterward she took a shower with Cheerio. Which was a good idea since being hosed off was probably the easiest solution to the amount of baby guacamole between her fingers. And on her eyebrows. And her face in general. 

We stopped when she seemed over it. Not really interested in the food coming at her (ie grabbing the spoon). The looks she gave us while eating were pretty close to "WHERE HAS THIS BEEN ALL MY LIFE?!?" I'm pretty certain she's convinced we've been holding out on her. After the shower though, she was all up for the boob. With a look sort of like "I haven't been cut off, have I?"

No, baby girl, you haven't. You've got boob milk at your disposal for a while to come now. 

Gluten free and dairy limited

Well, largely. I did give in and have cookie dough in my frozen yogurt on Friday. But other than that, we've been gluten free since Feb 13. It's not easy. I love bread. But I've had stomach issues my whole life (lactose intolerance and diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome since around age 11), and she's been having bad painful gas that has been known to wake her up screaming. So for the sake of both of us, we're trying this whole GF thing. 

For the record, Vanilla Chex and Puffins Honey Rice cereals are really good. 

It seems to have helped my stomach at least a bit and my trial run on Saoirse was somewhat thwarted by a minor virus that due to a slightly stuffy nose increased her bubbles. That was a rough couple of nights. 

I found this recipe for GF tortillas on Pinterest (it is on my dairy and/or gluten free board) which turned out amazingly good. Link: http://www.yammiesglutenfreedom.com/2013/04/gluten-free-flour-tortillas.html?m=1

They were awesome and pretty much just like gluten tortillas. So yummy. I should make some more. 

I plan on trying these later this evening. Link: http://food52.com/recipes/24791-gluten-free-dinner-rolls

God, I want some bread. I'm going to have to somehow figure out how to substitute xantham gum for psyllium husk  and some other thing for arrowroot flour, as I couldn't find either at Whole Foods. 

1st Valentine's Day

I took these yesterday in honor of Saoirse's first Valentine's Day. I'd been meaning to do a photo shoot for a while and, well, I had black sheets on my bed which made for an easy background. She's grown so much. She's almost 17 lbs, due to start solid foods at the beginning of March, when she's 6 months old. She still fits in many of her 3 mos outfits, but she's definitely moved more solidly into the 3-6 and 6 mos clothes area. 

She loves picking things up and shoving them in her mouth. She tried to steal some of Ana-Cherie's French fries yesterday, but my mom caught her before she got them into her mouth. Which is good because French fries are definitely not what I planned for her first solid food (that'd be avocado). We still haven't had that first tooth break through, even though she's been teething for what seems like forever. 

She loves to "fly" (us holding her up in the air), it gets the biggest grin out of her. She's also recently developed some consonants. She's saying something like "da da". She also likes to sputter, lots of slobber involved there. But it's cute. 

Pre-Shot Photo Sequence

We went and got the Pc and HiB shots today. I also hijacked their scale and weighed her with her clothes and diaper on. She's nearly 17 lbs there, so probably 16.5-16.75 without clothes and a diaper (we use cloth diapers so they're a bit more hefty).  Anyway, while we were waiting for the nurses to come back with the shots I took this sequence of pics because Saoirse was in a happy, chatty mood. 

She loves her hands. 

They're a great always-with-you toy/teething item. 

Chatting up a storm 

Smiley girl. 

She did pretty well with her shots. She cried, which is okay cause it hurts, but she cheered back up pretty quickly. She was back to flirting by the time we made her appointment for her 6 month checkup and shots in March.