She Says… BFFs

A dog is a boy’s best friend, right? Well it took a few months, but I think Schnitzel is finally growing into that title.

Now when Schnitzel and I go in to wake Owen up from a nap or in the morning, you wouldn’t even know I was in the room. Owen locks eyes with Schnitzel and sticks his chubby fingers against the side of his crib so Schnitzel can sniff them and give them a lick. Owen’s gummy grin opens up and he just stares and smiles. When we’re playing on the floor in Owen’s room, Schnitzel will go downstairs and grab a toy, and then come up and nestle himself right next to Owen as he chews away, dropping the toy on Owen every once in awhile trying to entice him to play tug-of-war. Owen practices connecting his rolls and new skill of scooting to maneuver himself closer to Schnitzel so he can get a nice handful of his soft fur.

Schnitzel has always been a laid back dog, but his patience with Owen is practically angelic. He lets Owen roll into him and grab his feet and his whiskers, and pays him back with endless licks all over his face and ears and neck and head (and hands and feet and tummy and arms and on and on and on). He also has this playful growl that we call his “Owen voice” that he only uses when playing with Owen. It makes Owen smile and open his mouth and Schnitzel does his best to get his tongue in there reallyfast before I can intervene.

Wanna see? I took this video a week or two ago, before Owen learned how to roll over from back to tummy. Warning: Mommy Cam alert. This is not Benjamin’s beautiful camerawork. It’s long, unedited, and I almost drop the camera pulling a dog toy out of Owen’s mouth. But you get the idea

Since we spend so much time playing with Schnitzel during the day, I also spend a lot of time saying things like, “That’s the DOGGIE. DOG. DOGGIE. Doggies say WOOF WOOF”, which Owen finds hilarious. I am going to place a bet now that Owen’s first word is dog, or some derivative thereof, and not Mama. THAT’S a best friend.

She Says… Determined

A week or two ago, Owen learned how to roll from his back to his tummy. Previous to that he rolled from tummy to back quite easily, in both directions; but on his back he was kind of like a turtle. A happy turtle, but he wasn’t going anywhere fast. His arms and legs never stopped moving with his signature wiggles, and he would even grab his feet and roll over to each side to look at toys, but he just couldn’t figure out how to finish the roll. Anyway, he finally figured it out. And I even caught the 2nd one on video (so Daddy could see, since he was out of town). But alas, I haven’t had the time to UPLOAD said video, so you’ll have to wait until I can publish a new set of “Mama Cam” videos from the last few weeks to see the cuteness.

So now that he’s figured it out, he’s a rolling machine. He cranes his neck and rolls his body around, grabbing at toys and giggling his little face off. Playtime now consists of him sitting and playing for a minute or two, then launching himself forwards so he face plants on the floor, then connecting rolls and turning around in circles on his tummy until he can grab everything within his armspan. It’s totally adorable.

However, I think this newfound skill has made him acutely aware of something he canNOT do. Crawl. Now that he spends so much time on his tummy, he stretches his arms and legs out (doing little baby “supermans” like Jillian Michaels does on my workout videos) and uses every muscle in his body to try to crawl, but nothing happens. The last few days he has gotten very frustrated while pushing his torso up off the floor, and it seems as though he wants nothing more than to be able to MOVE rather than just push up and fall down. Last night during our post-daycare play hour he was getting so frustrated he was straining and fussing while on his stomach. I helped him roll over to his back since he seemed like he was stuck on his tummy. He smiled for a minute, cooed, and then immediately rolled back to his tummy and kept right on fussing.

I am pretty sure he is going to stay on his tummy (and fuss) until he learns how to crawl. He seems pretty darn determined.

In the meantime, watching him try to figure it out is at the same time hilarious and painful. It’s easy enough for me to see what he’s doing wrong (he needs to get up on his knees, or master the army crawl with his arms), but it’s absolutely baffling his little brain. I guess this is the first of many times in his life when I’ll have to let him struggle it out to learn an important lesson.

Any bets on how long it will take him to learn how to crawl? How long did it take your baby to get from scooting and doing pushups to crawling? Any way I can help him figure it out?

She Says… Mom Ears

Moms have a number of different superpowers that seem to bubble up to the surface once they have a baby:

• Mom touch (the gentle hug that makes booboos go away and stops tears)
• Mom eyes-in-the-back-of-her-head (the ones that catch the little munchkins, and husbands, stealing cookies or picking bites out of the food she’s cooking for dinner)
• Mom strength (that can lift a car or run faster than a train to save her baby)
• Mom brain (that may not be able to remember what day it is or if she brushed her hair this morning, but somehow still remembers to pack lunches and find lost mittens and bake cookies for her child’s kindergarten class)
• Mom sense (the ability to know if her baby has a fever with the quick touch of her hand, the feeling that there’s going to be a poopsplosion right before she gets in the car so she waits it out, the feeling of understanding every little pout and sad face)

Over the last few weeks I think I’ve developed a new one: Mom ears. When Owen was teeny tiny, I would leave the monitor on full blast so that I could hear every little creak and breath and finger wiggle. Since he started sleeping through the night a few months ago, I slowly turned the monitor down, night by night, so that I wasn’t waking up every time he stirred. He is very good at putting himself back to sleep if he wakes during the night, so Benjamin and I give him the opportunity to practice this important skill by not going to him when he cries (to a point — if he cries for awhile and the sound of his cry is escalating or sounds different than normal, you better believe we’re in there in a heartbeat).

Once we hit that point of letting him fuss it out at night, there was nothing helpful about me waking up every time he made a noise just to listen to him cry and make sure he settled down. So a week or two ago I did something I had never done before: I turned the monitor OFF. It felt quiet. Too quiet. I felt guilty that I wouldn’t hear him, but Benjamin reminded me that if we’re not going in there anyway, what’s the point of us all not sleeping? And since I did that, something amazing happened. It’s like my ears have tuned into the exact sound of his cry. I can sleep through Benjamin coming home from a work trip and brushing his teeth and climbing into bed, but when Owen is crying, my eyes pop open like someone just smacked me across the face. It’s not that his cry is loud (though his room is right next to ours in a converted attic space), it’s that my body reacts so strongly to the sound of his voice. One night I even woke up and was listening to him fuss when Benjamin woke up too. He said, “What’s wrong?” I said, “Owen’s crying”. And he could barely hear him!

An interesting study was done that showed that men are more likely to be woken up by crickets chirping or a dripping faucet than a baby crying. A baby crying didn’t even make the top ten for men. For women, it’s #1. Dripping faucet is #2, which I really don’t understand. When was the last time you woke up to water dripping? Anyway, I digress.

Certainly there is something biological that accounts for my mom ears! What are your mom superpowers?

She Says… Cheeks-Be-Gone

I wrote a few weeks ago about how Owen was dealing with some overly rosy cheeks. At that point I didn’t really know if the redness and irritation were just normal “winter cheeks”, and, thus, unavoidable in this ridiculously snowy and freezing Boston winter, or something more. I asked everyone I came into contact with — moms, daycare teachers, the doctor, and everyone had a different answer. General consensus was that it looked like eczema, but the cause could have been any number of things (cold weather, food allergy, cow’s milk protein sensitivity, contact allergy, virus, fever/heat rash, bad habit of scratching the cheeks while sleeping, etc.).

I tested several theories like food allergies by restricting foods for a few weeks at a time and saw no change. We kept him inside for a few days at a time to see if it was going for walks outside that was causing the irritation. No change. The level of redness/itchiness varied from day to day, but was pretty constant. If I remember correctly, it started back in late November (right when the weather got particularly frigid, which is why I didn’t do anything about it for so long), so I’m fairly certain it’s not a virus or a passing bug. It was clearly bothering Owen because he would wake up every morning with bloody scratches down his cheeks and inside his ears, despite putting socks on his hands and slathering him in Aquaphor/vaseline before bed. The scratching inside the ears made me think maybe it was an ear infection, but we’ve been to the doctor three times in the last 3 weeks, treated for an ear infection once, did a full course of Amoxicillin, and then checked again and pronounced “all clear”.

After a few days of looking better, I woke up to this poor little sight.

There are no other signs of eczema on his body. He has some raised bumps on his arms and legs, but they are not dry like his face, and they are not red or irritated. I have some of these little bumps too, so I think they are unrelated to the face thing. Sigh. Poor little peanut. Even though we (still!) don’t exactly know the cause, we are still doing our best to treat the eczema.

After a few weeks of trial and error, I’ve found some things that have worked wonders on his skin:

• not using soap in the bath (or only every few days and only on his body, not his face)
• adding a few drops of jojoba oil to the bath for moisture
• slathering his face in Hydrolatum (available over the counter, but you have to ask for it at the pharmacy), like a thick, creamy, white version of vaseline/petroleum jelly, as soon as he gets out of the bath and after every diaper change
• using over the counter (1%) hydrocortisone on the worst days, but used sparingly, since from what I’ve read, it can thin the skin
• keeping his nail extremely short, like, clipping them every. single. day.
• pinning his hands down when he drinks a bottle (I hate doing this, but he has a habit of scratching his face while he drinks, and sometimes without even knowing he will make himself bleed)
• using a humidifier as much as possible (every night, and often when we play in his nursery) and NOT using a little space heater I had been using on very cold nights

After almost a week of the above treatments, his skin looks FABULOUS. There are still little patches of redness, but no more itching and no more bleeding. Thank goodness! If it doesn’t go away entirely once the weather warms, I am going to investigate a milk sensitivity (since his formula is milk-based and that is a relatively common issue with babies). For now, though, I’d rather not rock the boat with his eating since we have a great routine going, and we’ve made it through a rocky period with his reflux/tongue tie/nursing issues.

Anything else you have tried that you recommend for treating ultra sensitive, eczema-prone skin?

She Says… Baby Food is Good Food!

I have written before about how I love to cook and eat great food. Over the last few months I have forayed into something new in the kitchen — making baby food. Even before Owen started eating food, I thought a lot about my own food philosophy and how I hope to cultivate a happy, healthy relationship with food for him. This blog post on the topic turned controversial, though in rereading it I’m not entirely sure why, because I still stand by what I wrote. I guarantee that, down the road, there will be days when Owen will refuse “the healthy stuff”, but the bottom line is that if you don’t feed kids crap, they won’t eat crap. Period. And at least for now, I’m still in charge of what goes in his mouth! Although we won’t always be perfect, I think it’s still worth doing my very best to strive for a diet of mostly natural, whole foods and whole grains, with limited added sweeteners and processing. I’m not crazy about everything being organic (though when he moves into meat and dairy, I might be more inclined to stick to organic and hormone-free), rather, my focus is on eating pure, whole foods without additives.

In an effort to introduce him to the BEST flavors and textures out there, and to be sure that there’s nothing but food in his food, I make my own baby food. (Side note: Please do not leave me lots of nasty comments and emails about how I am judging people who do not make their own baby food. I am not. I’m talking about ME, not YOU). I was prepared for it to be a chore; a chore I was willing to do, but a chore nonetheless. But it’s not! It’s so easy and… I daresay… fun!

There are lots of cookbooks out there about cooking for your child. At this point we’re doing all purees, and haven’t added anything like spices, so there’s really no cookbook needed. However, I have found the So Easy Baby Food line of products to be incredibly helpful. My sister (a mother of two who also makes most of her baby food) sent me the So Easy Baby Food book and two of the lidded ice cube trays for freezing.

Essentially the steps to making your own baby food are to:

• Chop up the veggies (frozen or fresh) into small chunks
• Steam/bake/boil until they are mushy (I like steaming to keep as many nutrients as possible in the food and not in the cooking liquid)
• Puree (I like to use a food processor for  big batches and tough stuff, like peas, or an immersion blender for smaller batches or easy-to-puree things like sweet potatoes)
• Pour into the trays and freeze
• Pop them out and move them to a labeled ziploc and use the trays for the next batch of food

Since Owen started eating solids at 4 months he has had: avocado, peas, green beans, sweet potato, butternut squash, spinach, apples, bananas, prunes, white beans and yogurt. All of those have been homemade except the prunes (that seems like WAY too much work!). And rice and oats (from a box). One time we tried jarred carrots, but he didn’t seem to love them, and once I tasted them I knew why. Yuck! No more carrots for us until he can eat them (steamed) as a finger food, I think. Also, the white beans may not have been the smartest choice. He was ok for a few days and then had crazy amount of gas/burps. I can’t be SURE it was from the beans, but I think we’re going to put the beans on hold for another month or two.

I never really subscribed to the “eat one and only one food for several days at a time” philosophy. I started with one food, and then built from there, adding only one food at a time so I could easily figure out the cause if he had a reaction to the new food, but instead of separating foods I continually mix them together. I figure this gives him a little different flavor with every bite and every concoction we put together. He seems to dig it! Today I sent him off to daycare with a bowl of apples, bananas and oats, and a bowl of sweet potato, green beans and rice. Not a bad day of eats. When he comes home he’ll get one more bowl, probably something like spinach and yogurt or something like that.

I’m always looking for new things to add to his repertoire. What other foods have your babies tried?

She Says… Snippets

I’ve gotten some requests for more pictures and videos of Owen recently. I know, I know, last week’s posts were very wordy and picture-less. That’s what happens when I work hard all day and spend what is left of the day playing with Owen before bed

Without further ado, here are some snippets from our video camera from the last few weeks. Not one of Benjamin’s video masterpieces, but some cute moments!

 

She Says… Tricks of the Trade

I am always on the lookout for a deal. I shop with coupons whenever possible (whenever I think of it, happen to have them on-hand, and actually want to purchase the thing I have a coupon for) and I almost never buy clothing full price. I love me some discount stores and it thrills me to know that I got something that was originally $$$ for $. And I’m not afraid to use Target brand!

However, there are some things that I will not compromise on in terms of brands, even when I know there’s a cheaper option out there. Baby stuff is at the top of this list. And Greek yogurt. But that’s another story for another day. There is one place that makes shopping for all of this baby stuff ridiculously easy. AND it’s cheaper than most other stores like Babies ‘R Us. And the best part? It’s online, so I can shop in my underwear. And do I ever.

Amazon.com. I probably place an average of 3 orders a week. Every time I think of something we need, I order it. No more making lists or trying to fit in a Target run between nap times and wasting my afternoon trekking to Babies ‘R Us to find the right size of something Owen has grown out of. And when I realize right before bed that we’re almost out of formula and I’d bettergetsomerightnow, it’s ordered in one click and arrives in 2 days. That’s probably faster than I could get to Target with my list in hand and get the things I need. AND the prices are better.

Amazon has this awesome program called Amazon Moms. It’s free to join and you get free Prime (2 day) shipping on tons and tons of things. That takes care of my main issue with online shopping — I HATE to pay shipping. I would rather wait weeks to get to a store than pay a few dollars in shipping. It’s the principle of it all. Also, they’ve conveniently put links to all the things Moms (and Dads) need most all on one page. Believe me, I realize I am doing exactly what those smarty pants marketing folks at Amazon want me to do. I am their ideal customer. I order EVERYTHING through them. But you know what? It’s a win-win for both of us!

Another awesome program I take advantage of is the Subscribe and Save store. You can save 30%  on tons of stuff (like diapers! and wipes! and formula!) if you schedule regular deliveries of them. Not only do I like saving 30% on every jumbo box of diapers that I buy, but I also like not having to remember when to re-order them. They check with you before they schedule each shipment, too, so if you need a different size or something, you can change it or cancel it before it is sent. Genius, marketing peeps. Genius.

I swear, Amazon did NOT give me anything for writing this post, I just love the site. But I wish they had! Any Amazon marketers out there can feel free to contact me for future partnerships

But now, my wise readers, I would love to hear from you. Where do you save on baby stuff?

She Says… Uncle

That’s it. I’m crying uncle. There’s too much SNOW and ICE out there! Seriously. We’re practically buried. You can stop now. Please?

I’m on the verge of crying uncle about the amount of work I have to do too, so no time for a long post today. I’m going into head-down mode until my work is finished.

All of a sudden my feelings of “I don’t ever want to send Owen to daycare” have morphed into “I am SO relieved and happy to know that he is being taken care of and entertained while I work”. Even though saying that out loud makes me feel a tiny bit guilty, I think it is also a testament to how wonderful our daycare is and how confident I am that Owen is happy there. And although my work is very, very busy right now, it makes me feel accomplished and challenges my brain in a way it hasn’t been challenged in awhile. To see Owen’s gummy grin at the end of the day makes my heart burst with happiness for us both. I look forward to the day when he can tell me about what he learned and the friends he made while we were apart.

As we spend our Sundays house hunting and think about moving to another town, it makes me sad to think that we will have to move Owen out of this wonderful daycare. It’s one of the things I will miss the most.

Wow. If you had told me I would feel this way back on our first day (not that long ago!), I never would have believed you.

She Says… Re-Yogaing

It’s been awhile since I saw the inside of the gym. As those who have been reading this blog for awhile know, I used to go all the time. Even when I was 34 weeks pregnant (and beyond). Once Owen was born, my recovery took a lot longer than I thought it was going to, and I became active in other ways, but getting out of the house long enough to actually get to the gym became a rarity.

And by rarity I mean I could probably count on one hand the number of times that I’ve gone in the last 6 months.

I’ve gotten creative; I do a mean Jillian Michaels workout in my living room and can bang out a set of squats and lunges while I’m cooking dinner, but those days of long cardio sessions at the gym may be over, at least for the time being. I have actually been looking forward to going back to work so that I might be able to fit in some uninterrupted gym time while knowing that Owen is being cared for and entertained. Now that things at work are settling into a routine, I planned for this week to be my reunion with my long lost love friend frenemy, the gym.

Enter: Snowmaggedon 2011.

The meteorologists are calling this “one of the worst storms in history” because of the snow > sleet > snow > rain forecasts, and it’s bound to be a disaster on top of the millions of inches of snow that are already on the ground. Needless to say, after a slippery walk to daycare this morning, I realized I was not going to make it to the gym. Bummer. But the good news is that Owen is at daycare and I’m working from home, so at least I could start my “I’m going to work out again” plan from home.

I  banged out one of my favorite workout dvd’s and then tried out a yoga program on my new cable provider’s OnDemand. Both were awesome! How freeing it is to be able to work out and not listen for the cries on the baby monitor that always seem to cut my workout just short of feeling satisfying. This time I pushed hard and got through the whole workout.

Bonus: Yoga is WAY more fun to do without a big belly getting in the way! I felt so strong and flexible. Good to know that 6 months off from working out didn’t cause all my muscles to atrophy. So my new challenge to myself to workout at least three times a week is ON. Any suggestions for other workouts to do inside at home, since I may be trapped here indefinitely due to snow and ice?

She Says… What’s Cookin’?

As I’ve said before, I LOVE to cook. And Benjamin and I both love to eat fabulous food. We used to spend a lot of time in the kitchen whipping up delicious dinners and trying new recipes. Since Owen came along, my love affair with cooking has been a little hot and cold. On again, off again, if you will.

When Owen was teeny tiny and staying up until after our normal dinner hour, we did almost no cooking. It was the last few weeks of summer so I didn’t want to turn on the oven and heat up the house, and frankly, we had our hands full with our squirmy baby during that lovely early evening “witching hour”. I remember eating a lot of salads. We still ate pretty well because we planned for meals we could throw together in a few minutes, but it didn’t really satisfy my urge to get in the kitchen and create something wonderful. Once we started putting Owen down to sleep much earlier (6:00pm – 7:00pm), I reclaimed my time in the kitchen. I loved being able to put Owen down for the night and then have some time to just… cook. The last few months we’ve gotten into a nice routine where Benjamin preps things for me while I’m doing bedtime with Owen, so that when I come down we can cook it up and eat together. I love it.

That said, I still design my meal plans for the week based on whatever is easy and quick and doesn’t create a lot of dishes. Not exactly the relaxing, indulgent time of bread making and roasting and creating meals that I used to have. It’s possible I should just kiss those days goodbye, since I’m sure it doesn’t get any easier as the kids get older and go to bed later (or you have more than one!).

Last night Benjamin, Owen and I came home from an afternoon of house hunting to find that our house smelled glorious. Like the inside of a warm, steamy Italian restaurant. Garlic-y. Buttery. Holy YUM. It was a blessing and a curse. The smell was fantastic, but it wasn’t coming from our kitchen. It was coming from our tenant’s kitchen on the 1st floor of our house. We breathed in the deliciousness and joked about how we were going to their place for dinner.

And then we made a lame dinner of frozen ravioli and tomato sauce.

It made me realize just how much I miss that time in the kitchen I used to love so much. Don’t get me wrong; we cook every night. And I enjoy it. And we eat very well. But I can’t remember the feeling of flipping through a cookbook in the morning, picking out a new recipe to try, going to get the ingredients and losing myself in chopping and stirring and tasting.

Roast chicken and veggies is one of our favorites, since I just throw everything into one pan and stick it in the oven while we do bathtime and bedtime, and it’s ready when we’re finished. I’m also learning to love my slow cooker. The other week I made an Italian white bean soup and today I have a corn chowder bubbling away. It’s kind of the lazy man’s way to get that “cooking all day” smell. Any other suggestions of delicious but relatively quick dinners that could be made after the baby’s bed time?