I'm back! Sorry for the delay between posts. I have some very exciting news, which semi-justifies my delay--we're selling our house! My hubby and I know it's the right time, so we've been working faithfully to de-clutter and spruce up our home. I always vowed I wouldn't save updates to do on my house until I get ready to sell--why not update while I'm living there and enjoy some of the fruit of my labors, right? Well, that has panned out to making the transition to sell a fairly straightforward process. If my hubby weren't working over sixty hours a week, we could've been ready to go in a matter of a couple of weeks, but with a hubby who's not home much (and when he is, he's justifiably exhausted), two little ones under my constant care, and a semi-normal existence, it's been a challenge to get anything, no matter how small, done in a reasonable amount of time.
photo courtesy of kevindooley
Of course, this naturally begs the question, where are you moving to? The answer is simply, I don't know. We're looking for some change--either closer to everything we love in the city, or possibly land on the outskirts. With as little free time as we have, we've decided to take things ONE STEP AT A TIME. First step, prep the house to sell. Second step, find a realtor and put the house on the market. Finally, start doing some research about where we want to live.
Okay, I'll keep you posted. In the meantime, here are some more baby food suggestions and hints I've picked up in the midst of transitioning my baby from nursing to solids.
1. Taste the food you're giving your child. If you don't like it, don't give it to him/her. This is especially true with jarred baby food. Thankfully there's a great new alternative that we've been taking full advantage of--baby food in a squeeze pouch. It's re-sealable so you can use the leftovers later. There's no spoon needed--just squeeze the food into your baby's mouth. And when he/she gets older, he/she can feed himself/herself. My baby's a little over nine months, and she's already got the pouches mastered on her own.
You've got to do some shopping to get the good prices. Our favorite brand right now is Happy Tot because it's organic, tastes really good, and the packaging is BPA free. (Although the new studies on how people are able to so quickly making plastic products BPA free is a bit disturbing. For more information, read this.) We can find Happy Tot in some of our Targets, but not all of them. And it's way cheaper than Plum Organics. Happy Tot also went on sale at Babies R Us recently, so that's a good place to watch. But, the best prices are on Amazon--sign up to be an Amazon Mom, and then use the "Subscribe and Save" option instead of checking out through your cart--there are also occasional discount codes available too).
2. It's easy to feed your baby sweet fruits and sweet orange veggies, but give green a try! Spinach has been really easy for me to incorporate. I can blend raw baby spinach in fruit smoothies, and none of my family--even the big kids (hubby included) are any wiser. I can rub baby spinach with sea salt, drizzle with olive oil, and chop with some kalamata olives, and my nine-month old will eat it without hesitation. As I've mentioned before, I try to incorporate raw foods into my baby's diet as much as possible, and I've found that blending pears and spinach, or apples and spinach is really easy, really healthy, and my baby loves it!
Oh, and I use my Magic Bullet to make all my baby food--it really is magical. Another tip, if it's not blending right away and you need to add some liquid, use coconut water. It has so many more nutrients and good stuff in it than just plain tap water. My firstborn used to drink bottles of coconut water with her meals. She loved it. My second born isn't as excited, but she doesn't mind it blended in her food.
3. As I mentioned before, I'm following Gabriel Cousens's guide to raw baby food. To give you an idea of how we started things, I've give you a really abbreviated list of foods we used. To get the whole list, you'll have to buy the book.
At six months we used a lot of bananas, coconut water, mangos, pears, cucumbers (peeled & blended) and avocados.
LOTS of avocados!
At eight months we added some almonds (soaked and blended with fruit they make DELICIOUS porridges), grapes, olives, and more. Nine months is when we added more greens--kale, spinach, and more. And like I said, you really just need to buy the book to get the full lists and the delicious recipes. Seriously, I eat any leftovers of the recipes I make from this book. They are so yummy!
4. We talked about the dirty dozen before. I want to give you one more tip about using produce that will really set you up for success--and it will help you actually use all of the produce you buy. I think I heard this first on the Rachel Ray show. Wash/soak your produce as soon as you get home and unload the groceries. My routine is to unload groceries. As I'm unloading, I stack all the produce that needs to be soaked by the sink. Once my counters are clear again, I fill my sinks with an apple cider vinegar/purified water mix, and I throw everything in the sinks and let them soak for 30-60 minutes. Bam! It's all washed, so I don't cringe when pulling it out and grumbling as I wash it while rushing to make a meal. Bam! It's ready to eat, so I can just pop it in my mouth when I need a snack.
This is a pretty average supply of produce for one week (about two sinks' full).
What are your baby food tips? I'd love to hear what you've used, what you've found effective, and what you'd recommend to others just starting.
**Coming soon--pictures and details about my daughter's three-year birdie birthday party!
1 comment:
Hehe, thanks ::blushes::. I think I sound a lot more impressive on computer screen than in real life ;-)
I think it would be AWESOME to have chickens and room for a garden. I hadn't thought of goats, but now I'm thinking that would be super handy too! Yeah, I grew up in the country, and I want to go back every day. We'd pick the city for things like being close to Whole Foods =) We'll see how things pan out!
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