Hello 2014!

Happy Birthday sweet boy, today we celebrated twelve months!  You demonstrated your soon-to-be-toddler mad skills by standing unsupported for the first time which stunned me.  I let go of your hand to pull up the window blinds and imagine my surprise when I looked back to see you wobbly but standing alone on the living room rug, hands hanging in the air for balance.

Today was also the first day you spent with your new caregiver (albeit only for 3 hours) and tonight we took down the Christmas tree after you went to bed.  It was your (and my) first real Christmas tree ever and it was a beauty.  2014 is off to a big start already and next week I return to work which floods me with mixed emotions.   This month of transitions will be a difficult challenge, no doubt, but I have big plans for the year so bring it on.  I'm ready. Or I will be shortly, at least. 

Separation Anxiety and Other Unhelpful Terminology

If you are currently pregnant or entered recently entered motherhood then you are probably receiving emails from babycentre.ca.  Actually one of my co-workers whose kids are seven and five are still getting weekly updates on their child's development.

I think the website contains a wealth of useful information but I've also come across some terminology that sounds kind of silly to me.  And in new-mom circles I've heard these terms used often to describe the new phase their baby has entered.  One of the things mothers are often asked is how her new baby is sleeping.  One mother will explain that her baby has been sleeping through the night for months but has recently decided to wake up every hour or two crying.  "Ahhh....it's sleep regression" another mother will nod, knowingly.  Sleep regression? Isn't that just basically saying "Ahhh....she's no longer sleeping well".  You don't need a term for it, do you?  Or is having a label just cuter than saying "Ahhh...it's sleep-not-well".  I am relieved Adam has not entered this phase (yet).

"Somebody pick me up already!"

How about Separation Anxiety?  Now that is a phase Adam entered three weeks ago.  It's funny when I tell people that Adam has become very clingy and cries when I leave his side.  "Oh don't worry, it's just separation anxiety," they reply.  Well, yes I know, I just told you as much. Explaining that he's uneasy about being apart from me is not new information.  It's about as helpful as telling an eczema sufferer that she has dermatitis.  Dermatitis: an inflammatory skin condition.

They say separation anxiety strikes around nine months which is dead on for Adam, although he experienced something similar around seven months for a few weeks.  That was fun.  Last night I was exhausted after another day of entertaining and soothing a clingy baby joined at my hip, all the while trying get a few things done....like go to a doctor's appointment, pick up some supplies from the sewing store, make and eat food, clean sticky toys.  But then around Adam's bedtime I was holding him up to play with the buttons on our thermostat and he turned to me, cooed, and gave me a big wet kiss.  I've been teaching him how to blow kisses for about two weeks and he's great at pursing his lips like a fish and smacking them loudly.  It's adorable. But this time he was leaning in to actually give me a kiss on my nose.  He did it several times in a row as if to say "Mama I love you" or "Mama your nose looks delicious".  It was the sweetest thing in the world.

Babysaurus Rex Part Two: The Torso

Aside from making the semi-successful pumpkin granola this weekend I also finished off Adam's dinosaur costume.  Last week I started with the head. Then, after three attempts at the inner lining I finally got something that fit properly around his torso.  I mostly sew during Adam's naps and this means I can't try things on him as I go along.  I try to use some of his shirts as guidelines and sketch up pseudo-patterns to follow but it's not really the same as having a physical model to try it on.  However once I got the sizing down the rest was just a lot of fun.  

I wanted a round, stuffed belly for the dinosaur as well as a stuffed tail and spikes all down the back.  I debated for a while about where to put the opening for the torso and didn't like the idea of a zipper running through his belly or interfering with the scaly spine.  In the end Velcro did the trick and I used it along one side of the torso and shoulder strap to secure the costume together.  Velcro is certainly simpler than installing a zipper and I should have thought of that from the start!

Scrap fabric for inner lining

Velcro closure along the side

Orange felt for the spikes

Tonight Mike helped try the costume on Adam and check the fit.  Halloween is gonna be awesome!

"Raaargh!"

Babysaurus Rex Part One: The Head

Halloween is just around the corner and this year we are playing dressup!  Two years ago Mike and I attended a terrific costume party as Maverick and Generic Flight Attendant (guess who I was).  How funny was it when the host came out dressed in the same Top Gun outfit?  Looks like one of them had to be Goose instead.

Last year we wanted to get dressed up but I had trouble thinking up a good costume for my 7-month pregnant body.  I Googled a bunch of costumes for pregnant women but just wasn't in the mood to paint my tummy a pumpkin or a basketball....or fish bowl...or bowling ball. You get the picture.  We ended up just carving a Frankenstorm pumpkin and handing out candy to children in the rain.  No costumes.  Just nice, loose sweat pants with elastic waist bands - ohhh yea.

The really great part about handing out candy last year was that we got to see just how many children there are in our neighbourhood!  I was shocked. We ran out of candy waaay before 8pm and I'm sure we must have had at least 60 kids, rain and all.  I had no idea!  Now that I'm on maternity leave I'm getting to know the children in the neighbourhood and regularly see groups of them at the splash pad down the block (or at least I did in the summer).  It's great to know Adam will have lots of children around him as he grows up.  

We've decided that even though he won't understand what's going on yet, Adam is going to participate in Halloween fun this year.  He's going to get dressed up and sit by the door and "help" hand out candy. What is he going to be, you ask?  A Babysaurus Rex!

I got the idea from this site - now isn't the "fuzzy dinosaur" costume just adorable??  But paying $70+ for it at Pottery Barn Kids is much less than adorable so I'm going to make him one instead.  Yup...I paid a visit to Len's Mills and raided the scrap bin for fleece.  I would have preferred green but blue was on sale.  I'm sure a blue dinosaur is every bit as believable as a purple one, right Barney?

I've only finished the head so far but it's a pretty big accomplishment.  I modeled the inner lining after a hood on Adam's zippy.  I knew I wanted the head to be puffy so I sketched the outer shell to be roomier than the lining, creating a big pocket for batting.   After attaching teeth and spikes I was ready for stuffing - the fun part, right?  Actually it hadn't occurred to me (though it should have) that stuffing the pocket would turn it into a big awkward ball rather than a helmet-shaped dinosaur head!  There was no way it was fitting on Adam's head.  I also realized it only made sense to stuff the top portion of the head, not the part that sits at the back of where Adam's head would go.  Oh well, you learn by doing.

I ended up having to tack down a whole bunch of spots, essentially pinning together the inner lining to the outer shell.  This seemed to help shape the head back into a nice helmet-shape.  I'm eager to try the finished head on Adam but don't think it's a good enough excuse to wake him up so I'll leave it til morning.  On to the torso and tail - hooray!

Nine Months In, Nine Months Out

It took only 38 weeks to grow such a beautiful little person in my belly...and when another 38 weeks flew by that eager little person started to crawl for the first time.  What an incredible journey.

When I look at Adam's monthly photos I am taken aback by how much he has changed. Was he really so pudgy at two months?  And check out 3-4 months when he lost his hair - now that was an awkward phase.  I love month 7.  I wish I could remember what the joke was.

Adam got to celebrate nine months with good friends. No no, it wasn't a planned party...or at least, not a planned birthday party (I'm not that silly to celebrate nine months with cake).  It was however a planned slumber party, albeit probably the shortest one these kids will ever have.  It was only twelve hours altogether including sleep time but we were still delighted to have Brigitte and her family crash at our place on their way from Ottawa to Vineland.  And the babies were delighted to be reunited.

"Oh good, it fits!

Mish Mush?

This past month I've been trying various pureed foods out on Adam to get him used to new textures and flavours.  So far he's sampled mashed or pureed bananas, avocados, sweet potatoes, carrots, squash, apple sauce, oat/barley cereal, and now....broccoli!

I'm happy to report that he gobbles down the non-sweet foods (e.g. avocados and broccoli) as readily as the sweet ones.  I've been giving him a new food only every three days or so to make it easier to identify any potential food allergies (none so far, knock on wood).  Now that we've tried a pretty good variety I think I'll make his purees in larger batches and freeze them so he can have different tastes day to day.  Yesterday I started with broccoli and carrots.  

I put the carrots (chopped into smaller pieces) and broccoli florets into the steamer basket, then steamed for about 20 minutes.  Possibly could have removed the veggies after 15 minutes but I wanted to make sure the carrots were nice and soft.  Then I put the carrots and broccoli (separately) into a blender along with some of the water from the pot and voila - orange and green mush!

I had read previously that ice cube trays come in handy when freezing baby purees and yes, each cube really is equal to an ounce (I tested it)!  Adam will easily gobble down at least four cubes at a time though so one tray only lasts about three meals.

Next I tried to put the tray into a large freezer bag but as you can see it was just oh so slightly too small. Darn.  I thought maybe if I just sealed the zipper as much as possible it would be ok but there was some frost after a few hours.

Once the purees solidified I popped the cubes out of the tray and stored them in a smaller freezer bag.  Don't they look delicious?  Maybe because they look like little popsicles....mmmmm orange and green apple :)

Holy ArtsCow!

Yay my custom board book arrived in the mail yesterday and Holy ArtsCow, the printing quality is exceptional!  

While I was pregnant with Adam my mother-in-law showed me some poems that she had written for Mike when he was a baby.  She had always meant to create a book with them but had never gotten around to it.  The poems were terrific and a seed was planted in my mind to eventually create that book for both her and Adam.  Well I finally sat down and spent two afternoons putting together the illustrations and pages to create this wonderful book of Poems from Nana to Daddy to Adam.

Now I want to state upfront that I did not draw the pictures in this book as I did in the Christmas book for Anna.  I thought about it.  But I still don't have a tablet and when I drew those pictures with just a mouse (or even my index finger on my laptop touch pad) it took a very long time.  

The challenge with finding clipart online is that most of them have poor resolution or a huge annoying watermark across them or are inconsistent in drawing style (i.e. one is cartoonish, one is a sketch, one is a line drawing, etc).  Fortunately I'm pretty handy with Gimp and Photoshop so I could increase the pixel resolution, eliminate watermarks pretty easily, add background and details, and even alter the images to better suit the poem.  For example it didn't take long to transform that little girl with blond hair and pigtails, freckles, and long eyelashes into a little boy pilot!

However finding consistent drawing styles online was just something I had to invest time doing.  Eventually I was able to find all the pictures I wanted and then it was a matter of finding a good printing house.  I half convinced myself of turning it into a cloth book like the one for Caleb but then talked myself out of it again.  There are several websites I came across for making custom board books.  One of the most popular ones I kept reading about is pint size productions, but when I asked for a quote, not only were they pricey but their standard number of pages wasn't enough for what I needed.  

I also considered buying chunky blank board books and then printing the pages on full-page labels and creating the book that way.  Again, just didn't really do it for me.  

Finally I decided to go with a deluxe 6"x6" photo book from ArtsCow and I couldn't be happier.  The biggest challenge with actual board books was finding ones that could accommodate the number of pages for  these poems.  With ArtsCow I was actually creating a photo book with lay-flat pages (4x the thickness of regular pages) as a way to mimic a board book.  There were still some conditions to the number of pages (e.g. multiples of 4) due to how the book is constructed but it happened to work out just right for me.  I also took advantage of a free shipping promo so the total was $23.  That's not bad considering some regular board books are $8.99 + tax. There's also a 4"x 4" option which is cheaper.

Anyway for anyone considering making a custom board book, I would suggest giving ArtsCow a try if other board book companies can't meet your needs. However if anyone does find a good printing site I would love to hear about it!  

Half A Year Gone By Already...

Yesterday Adam turned six months old.  Now wait a minute, where's the rush??

I'm definitely one of those annoying parents who thinks their child is the cutest one out there but at least I try to tone it down around other people.  Every month I think "Ok, now he's the cutest he'll ever possibly be" but he keeps proving me wrong.  Adam is at an adorably fun stage right now and I just want to hang onto every wonderful moments for as long as possible.  It feels like in a blink of an eye he went from this -

1 week old

- to this!

It's embarrassing how many photos I take of Adam but when my maternity leave is over and I can't spend my whole days with him, at least I'll get to sit down to a warm cup of tea and look over these snapshots of his first year of life:  how he practically doubled in weight at month two; how he lost most of hair in month three; how he simultaneously punched, kicked, and laughed for a photo at month six.  I won't regret having this huge collection of photos at all - nope, not one bit.

Oatmeal: My First Taste of Solid Food

Well, calling it "solid" would be pretty misleading.  It was more like watery mush with specks of slightly-less-watery mush.  Sounds yummy, doesn't it?

On Sunday we gave Adam his first taste of something other than breastmilk.  Actually that's not true, in his first month he pounded back the formula to get over his jaundice but since then it's been nothin' but mama-milk.  I thought I was going to put off solids for as long as possible now that breasfeeding is finally easy but I was actually excited to give him his first bite.  His close eyeing of me eating my meals over the past two weeks and his desire to grab things off the plate made me think he was ready for solids, even though the pediatrician said I could wait until he was 6 months.  Close enough, right?

I was pretty exhausted in the morning after Saturday's BBQ and the thought of running out to the grocery store just to pick up some rice cereal didn't appeal to me.  I had already used up all the bananas for the last banana-walnut loaf, and the avocados had gone into the salad from Saturday.  Oh well, what else could we try?  I Googled a few sites and read good things about starting babies off with oatmeal so that's what we did.

I read that steel cut or regular oatmeal would be good, just not the instant kind. Luckily we have the regular rolled oats on hand (10-15 min on stovetop or 4-5 min in microwave) so I ground up 1/4 cup in the Magic Bullet to create a powder and then cooked that in a small pot with 3/4 cups of water.  The result was pretty similar to oatmeal that I would eat, and a bit lumpier than I had expected after grinding down the oats.

While I was preparing the oatmeal Adam woke up and wanted to see what was going on. Mike didn't even get a shirt on him yet!

"Whatcha makin' mama?"

I added a few teaspoons of breastmilk to thin out the oatmeal and then we sat Adam in the Bumbo for his first meal.  Mike held his hands out of the way since he kept wanting to grab the spoon and ram it down his throat - yikes!  I took a bit of video from his first few bites but it was a bit tricky with the camera in one hand and spoon in the other. I couldn't even manage to get much oatmeal onto the spoon with just the one hand but I did manage to get some pretty cute footage of the little guy.  

Yesterday was Day Two of solids and I heated up some of the extra oatmeal left over in the fridge from Sunday.  This time after I added the breastmilk I blended the whole thing in the Magic Bullet once more and the consistency was much better. No lumps!  I think that's the way to go, although I will experiment with a few different ways to cook/store the oatmeal in larger batches for convenience's sake. 

What's going to be next - avocados, bananas, sweet potatoes?  Tune in to find out :)