What to feed a 10 month old?

Griffin and I are in a special time right now.

At his last well-child appointment, the pediatrician said that I needed to start cutting back on his bottles and get more solid food into him.

YAY!  Formula costs roughly the same as a side of beef and cutting down helps our budget.  However, this causes another issue.  He is STARVING.

WHAT DO I FEED THE BOY!?!?!

He’s a baby, feed him baby food, you say.  With some kids, this might work.  With my kid, no, not so much.

Oh, he liked the baby food until I started giving him table food.  Loved baby green beans and then I fed him real green beans and he would have nothing to do with the baby green beans.  I mean, what would you rather have: tasty green beans or snot-like green bean goo?

So meal time is fun.  What he liked yesterday, gets thrown across the room today.  He likes green beans, carrots, potatoes, peas, most any vegetable.  He likes meats.  He loves fruit. 

Pasta is hit or miss.  Spaghetti is meant to be thrown apparently.  Mac and cheese is sometimes good and sometimes throwable.  The noodles from double noodle soup is also hit or miss – meaning sometimes he hits you and sometimes he misses.

I have to steer clear of anything too acidic like tomatoes and citrus fruit – his system is still too sensitive.  I also steer clear of the major allergy prone foods like garlic, onion, strawberries, chocolate and nuts – at least until his second birthday.

So here’s my query: what do I feed my boy?  He’s 10 months old and I feel bad about just feeding him chicken nuggets, green beans, cubed cheese and diced apples.

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I get sick almost every Halloween

A few days ago, I decided that I was starting to react to the autumnal pollen.  So I did what every reasonable person who is allergic to damn near everything did: I decided that was a good time to sweep the back porch covered in said polleny wonder.

Now I do have to admit that I was having some of MOMS Club friends over for a scrapbook session and the kids would be playing during this.  I knew that letting the kids run on the porch would be something they could do to run off some energy.  We were having nice weather and the kids loved the porch.

Next morning, which happened to be Wednesday, my voice sounded like I’d smoked about 4 packs of cigarettes before 10 am but I still felt ok.  Just a little tired.

By the next day, Thursday, however, I decided that I had seriously screwed up.  My nose was completely blocked and my throat was irritated and again with the raspy voice…

I needed to feel better fast.  Friday was going ot be action packed.  I had a purse party in the morning and John’s work was hosting their annual Halloween party for the kids.

Every year, this place has a seriously awesome party for the employee’s kids and this year, the employees were decorating all of the meeting rooms.  After hearing about the plans that John’s group had, I really wanted to see it.

I ended up missing the morning party much to my chagrin but at least my finances were happy.  I would have spent too much money as I LOVE purses.  But I needed to make an appearance at John’s party with the kids in costume.

I had never dressed up before but always got Phoebe dressed up but then John didn’t usually dress up either. This year, he was dressing up and I didn’t want to be left out.

Things I learned:

1. It is a challenge to get two kids dressed in costume – especially if you are alone when attempting this.
2. It is an even bigger challenge if you plan to costume yourself as well as two young children.
3. Fake blood takes a bloody long time to dry and will get all over EVERYTHING
4. My kids are more freaked out about the wig cap that goes on under the wig than the wig itself.
5. It is difficult to get a 3 year old in a ball gown clipped into a car seat.  The skirt is very fluffy and really gets in the way.
6. People pay no attention to people driving down the road.  They also pay no attention to a lady driving an SUV, covered in blood and seemingly being attacked by birds while driving down the street.
7. The few people who do pay attention will take a picture of you on their phone – while they drive down the road.

So we had a great time at the party and then we stopped at Varsity which has the best burger anywhere and the most fabulous chocolate milk in the world.

When we got home, I immediately went to bed but didn’t stay there.  I had developed a horrible cough and the only way I could sleep was sitting up.  Thank goodness for our recliner.  I slept there for a couple of nights before finally breaking down and going to the doc.

Sinus infection, ear infection and bronchitis.  YAY!  I am an overachiever.

I’m beginning to feel better but the kids have gotten a little bit of it too.  They have a little bit of a cough and are a little stuffy but it seems to be getting better.

That’s how we’re doing, how about you?

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How to make caramel apples

1. Purchase caramel apple kit.
2. Line cookie sheet with wax paper.  Ready plastic wrap to wrap your delicious creations.
3. Follow directions on package to melt caramel.
4. Push sticks into apples.  Nearly lose eye when one stick breaks and splinters fly through air.
5. Pick up apple on a stick.  Apple slips off stick.  Put apple back on stick.  Repeat.  Swear with great creativity. Figure out how to angle apple so it won’t fall off stick.
6. Dip into sauce that is now hotter than molten lava.
   Swear obscenely when stick comes out of apple leaving apple bobbing in viscous goo.  Go find the mother effin’ tongs.
7. Realize you’ve destroyed tongs because you found preschooler using them to mess with "things" in toilet.  Find the salad spoons instead.
8. Use salad spoons to dig apples out of caramel sauce that is now hotter than the sun.  Sauce drips off of salad spoons and onto your pants leaving a blister the size of your hand.  Swear loudly enough that the neighbors think there’s some sort of domestic situation at your house and call police.
9. Repeat process with remaining apples and/or say to “hell with it” and go buy caramel apples at grocery store.
10. Enjoy!

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Broken Wings and Stranger Things

10 days ago, I found myself in the worst place a parent can imagine: the emergency room with an injured child.

It started earlier that evening.  I was cooking dinner, John was holding the baby and Phoebe was The Pink Tornado.  This is a term coined by one of John’s friends regarding her own preschool age child but it fits Phoebe so well that I’ve stolen it.

Like most three year olds, Phoebe is in perpetual motion.  She’s running here, scampering there, dancing around and jumping up and down.  She’s also moody and can be crying one moment and laughing the next.  She trips over her own feet and more often than not says “I’m ok!” before I can even ask.

She also has the annoying interesting habit of running off to hide when she’s upset or hurt.  Which is what she did after she flipped over a wheeled office chair I keep in the kitchen.  She hit the floor quite hard but I was mostly concerned with her noggin.  Not feeling any kind of knot on her head, I decided to let her finish processing the incident and let her hide behind a chair in the living room.

After about 10 minutes, she’s still crying and it’s not quite like anything I’ve heard from her before.  There was an urgency to it.  John finally got her out from behind the chair and I gave her what I thought was a pretty thorough inspection.  I checked her arms, her head, her back.. I saw no redness, no swelling, no bruising. 

She stopped crying but there was definitely something wrong.  I thought maybe she’d bruised something that just hadn’t shown up yet.  I gave her some Tylenol and then she wanted up in my lap.  That’s when I figured out something was wrong with her arm.  I had looked at her arm; had bent the elbow, but didn’t see anything wrong and she didn’t react to me bending the elbow.  As I picked her up, I put my hands under her arms to lift her up and that’s when she screamed and I now understood what the crying meant.  She was in real pain and there was something going on beyond preschooler drama.  There was definitely something wrong but I wasn’t sure whether it was her arm, her shoulder or maybe even a broken rib.

I made the decision right there to take her to the emergency room.  Atlanta is blessed to have a great children’s hospital system that consists of three hospitals, numerous urgent care center, etc.  I took Phoebe to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta at Hughes Spalding.

This hospital is near Grady Hospital in downtown Atlanta.  The location isn’t too great, but the parking lot is secure and brightly lit at 10:30 at night.  They validated my parking and we were in and out in just under two hours.

The nurse we worked with immediately saw the swelling on her chest.  I hadn’t seen it, wasn’t looking for it.  But it was there and turning red.  An x-ray showed that Phoebe had a broken collar bone.

Next day, an orthopedic explained to me that the collar bone, or clavicle, is the most broken bone in the human body and is very thin in children.  But she also told me that children are amazing healers.  Within a month, the bone will reconnect and within about 8-10 weeks, the healing will be mostly complete.  Additionally, in children this young, within about a year, the bone will actually remodel itself to return to it’s normal shape and it will be almost impossible to tell that it was ever broken.

So my daughter is part Time Lord.

Meanwhile, I’ve got to keep her from reinjuring it.  Remember she is the Pink Tornado.  So no jumping, no playgrounds, no climbing, no nothing that will keep it from mending properly.  Her grandparents overnighted a cool wooden “paper” doll set that she loves and is helping to keep her entertained.

The hospital put her in a weird brace that held her shoulders back.  The orthopedic first put her in a standard arm sling with a waist strap to keep the arm immobile.  After our second visit, another practitioner suggested a shoulder immobilizing brace that is actually working a lot better.

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My kid is so talented

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Would you like some cheese with that WHINE?

I have decided I have to change my attitude.

I’ve been tired and worn out and, well, just pissy for so many days now that I have got to do something else.

So I have decided to focus on the positive.

For example, instead of fussing that I only got 4 hours of sleep last night, I will get excited that I got those 4 hours IN A ROW and IN MY OWN BED!!  Because more often than not, I sleep in the recliner downstairs and Nugget sleeps either in the pack and play or the swing.  This happens not by design but because I don’t know how long I have before the next scream-a-thon at night.

I have tried, as much as possible, to let Phoebe and Moo get as much sleep as possible.  Moo needs the sleep because he is going out of the house and working every day.  Phoebe needs the sleep because OH-MA-GAWD preschoolers MUST sleep or they get cranky and cranky mommy can only deal with so much crankiness every day.

So I try to keep Nugget’s crying upstairs to a minimum. 

This is not easy or, to tell the truth, possible.  He seems to have his cranky period from 6:30 until midnight or 3AM, which ever seems to drive me crazy first.

Actually, it is getting better, because as I stated above, he settled down at midnight last night and slept until 4.  I felt that he was pretty sleepy and put him down upstairs instead of in the pack and play or swing.  This means that I got to sleep in my bed.  I didn’t take off my clothes but I did sleep in my bed.

So see?  I put a positive spin on it.  No whining.  Let’s see if I can keep it up.

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3 weeks...

"When he lay on my chest for the first time, part of me felt as if someone had given me a Martian baby.… Part of me felt like I was holding my own soul." - Anne Lamott

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Conversations with my toddler

I haven’t talked about Phoebe’s speech development in a while.

Truth is, there isn’t much to say.  Not that there’s no improvement.  There is.  She’s talking up a storm.  Perhaps not on level with her age, but her vocabulary has greatly expanded and nearly every day I hear her say something new.

Here’s a conversation we had this morning:

Phoebe: Mama, juice. (what she calls fruit cups)

Me: No, we’re going to have breakfast.

Phoebe:  Mama, juice.

Me:  No, let’s have cereal.

Phoebe:  Cereal?  (Thinks about this for a moment).  Juice?

Me:  No, we’re going to have cereal.

I open the refrigerator to get the milk and, of course, she sees the mandarin orange cups she’s jones’n for.

Phoebe: (pointing wildly)  MAMA JUICE!!  MAMA JUICE!! MAMA JUICE!!

I put her in the booster chair and pour the milk.

Me: Let’s eat cereal.

Phoebe now begins to cry with real tears and everything. 

Phoebe: (tearfully) Maaaamaaa… juice….

Whereupon, I open and drain a cup of mandarin oranges and give them to her.

Phoebe: (daintily placing one orange slice in her mouth) Mmmm… good juice.

Yeah…

My mother in law is coming to spend some time with us when Nugget makes his appearance so I wrote down a few of Phoebe’s words.

She knows a lot of words and you can understand most of them.  But sometimes the meanings are not the same as what you and I might think.

Words with multiple meanings
"Sauce" - some type of sauce, usually ketchup, but can also be salsa or grape jelly.
"Car" - can be a car, but can also mean the stroller
"Omnia" - usually means "banana" but can also refer to her Dumbo stuffed animal or elephants
"Cracker" - can be a cookie or cracker or chips - anything crunchy like that
"Cookie" - interchangeable with cracker... could be cookie, could be cracker, could be chips...
"Cow" - can be a cow but also a horse.
"Carow" - candy, carrots or my aunt Carole
"Juice" - can be juice but also any fruit in the refrigerator

Words and Phrases that have meaning to her but maybe not to you
"boo-boo" - boobs.  This is usually accompanied by her pointing to or patting your boobs.
"Ouchie" - a physical ailment like a scraped knee.
"Ahm" - Apple
"Tig" - Tigger stuffed animal

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Things I wish someone had told me... part duh

First edition of this is here:

3. What to do when your baby girl, who has been whining most of the night in her crib at grandma's house, wakes up at 4 am with a 102.8 fever. However, I feel vindicated because even the doc at urgent care didn't see that she had an ear infection. Took the regular pediatrician digging the ear wax out of her ear to see it. Bad mother. Bad. Bad.

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Ways I will Screw Up my Kid: Third Time's the Charm!

This is the ongoing series where I detail how I am screwing up my kid... part one is here, and here is part two

5. I am no longer allowed within 10 yards of my delicate baby with nail clippers in my hand. Why? Because both times I've attempted to trim the claws that she insists on gouging her face with, I've nicked her fingers. This clipping has resulting in bleeding (minor), screaming (her - quickly comforted by momma), and crying and curling into a fetal position (not the child - but momma). Instead of clippers, I have been using an emery board to file down her talons.

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Ways I will screw up my kid, Part Deux

The second part in my ongoing series of how I will mess up my kid... part 1 can be found here

4. She can no longer rest on the ottoman in our living room like a jewel on a pillow. Why? 'Cause she rolled right off of it today. Scared the hell outta me, but she's ok. She cried for all of 30 seconds and was quickly comforted. I'm paranoid enough that I immediately went to Dr Google to look up concussions to see if Phoebe had one.

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Ways I will screw up my kid

I believe that like the previous "Things I'd never do" segment, that this will become an ongoing series where I detail how and why I will screw up my kid making her as dysfunctional as the rest of us.

First...

1. I bonked her head on the handle of the carrier the day we brought her home from the hospital. She cried and then settled down and was fine. There was the lightest mark on her pristine little head that faded quickly, but I'm sure I damaged the part of her brain that will do long division or the part of her brain that will decide what nursing home to put me in one day.
2. When she's crying hysterically or just really needy but I'm at the end of my patience, I have a tendency to put her down in her crib or pack and play and say "Kid, you'll need to hang out for a minute. I've got other stuff to do." Then, I take a break and regain my senses and then pick her up again and deal with whatever the issue is. I am sure she will have some sort of trust issues and will put me in a terrible nursing home one day.
   
3. I call her "Kid" a lot. I am sure she will never learn her proper name and will go through life saying "My name is Phoebe, but everyone calls me 'Kid'". I have always jokingly said that I thought my own middle name was "Damn it" until I was 12. I am sure this is punishment for besmirching my parent's good name.
   

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Things I said I'd never do - or how I use that salt as I eat my words...

I'm imagining this will be the first in a continuing series where I detail things I said I'd never do as a parent. Until you've had a newborn screaming at you, you don't really know what you'll do and I imagine that as I go, the word "newborn" will be replaced by infant, toddler, preschooler, etc.

So here's the first thing:

I will never use a pacifier to calm my child.

Ha! This one was dead at the hospital. The hospital where Phoebe was born readily used pacifiers and taught Moo and I several tricks to make her take it when she was really upset.

My mother told two stories about her hatred of pacifiers. The first, involved me. I was about 2 weeks old and my parents gave me a pacifier to settle me down. These were the old fashioned ones that were totally made of brown rubber including the ring, mouth guard, etc. I had been pulling it out of my mouth and screaming, so my Dad - in his infinite wisdom - cut off the ring making it the first ringless pacifier. He didn't count on his daughter being creative at 2 weeks.

Mom said she was on the phone with a favorite aunt while I was in my bassinet a few feet away. She said that I was noisily sucking on the pacifier when I suddenly became quiet. Mother was paranoid even then and decided I was too quiet. She checked on me and I had the ENTIRE pacifier in my mouth - nipple and guard. She said my eyes were bulging slightly and I was turning blue - obviously I hadn't figured out how to breathe out of my nose - and she had to pry my mouth open a little to slide her finger in to pop out the pacifier. I was instantly pissed and cried for hours. From that day, my parents never used another pacifier.

The second story involved our next door neighbor.

Noelle was exactly one month younger than I. She was also addicted to her pacifier. She had to have one at all times to the point of shrieking hysterically that she'd lost her "passy" at my FIFTH birthday party. Her parents literally had decorative bowls around their house filled with pacifiers. Should a passy not be found - like in the middle of the night - her father would go rushing to the nearest all night drugstore (not an easy feat in 1975) to get another. My parents expressed their disgust of Noelle's passy addiction by furtively stuffing their pockets with all the pacifiers they found at the neighbors house and then throwing them away. I, too, was guilty of hiding Noelle's passys - mainly cause she was such a little brat about them.

As for my use of Pacifiers with Phoebe - well, sometimes she likes them, sometimes not. Last night, she was really fussy and wanted nothing to do with a pacifier. Only laying on my chest would calm her down. But sometimes, if she gets really agitated, we swaddle her tightly (how long does that work?!?) and pop the pacifier in her mouth. She'll calm down and go to sleep.

So what have you said you'd never do, but did?

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