Giving Credit: Bright Starts

Thank you Bright Starts for making my day. Peanut had recieved a Lion in the Park gym by Bright Starts for an early Christmas gift from his grandma. He loved it. He could stay under there perfectly content for long (30 minutes) stretches of time--which seems pretty impressive when not that many other toys can hold his attention for more than a few minutes.
I'll admit initial hesitation to purchasing these gyms. All my mom friends said their kid never used it, never liked it, and they became just an expensive cat toy/ laundry collection site. Not so for Peanut. He loves it. He especially loves the lady bug in the center which plays a variety of catchy tunes reminicent of ring tones.
That is, he loved the lady bug until a few weeks after use, the lady bug stopped playing. Well, not completely stopped. She'd play 5 measures in, then stop. Then it was only two measures, then just a few notes. With no option for changing the battery, I thought the lady bug was sunk. Peanut was disheartened and his mother was less than happy.
I wrote the company a sternly worded e-mail. With only a follow-up email and no additional harasmment necissary on my part, they really did the right thing to keep me happy consumer--they mailed us a no cost replacement lady bug. It made peanut so happy, which really made my day too. Thanks Bright Starts!

Adventures in Real Food: Round 1

Over five months and pushing sixteen pounds, our little peanut is becoming quite the conesuir of non-formula foods.

Food experiment one: Rice Cereal.

Reaction: meh. He wasn’t too impressed. I must admit, I am impressed with neither rice cereal’s appearance nor taste. We add a shake of cinnamon on occasion to spice things up. Peanut is like his dad and loves his cinnamon. After the first two days of cereal dinner, peanut would push his bottle away at dinner time, awaiting his cereal.

Food experiment two: green beans

Reaction: Good at first. Peanut used to scarf down green beans, until he discovered peas. Now he makes a face when he gets green beans, wishing he was having peas instead.

Food experiment three: peas

Did I mention, peanut loves his peas? He would eat peas for every meal if he could. We’ve been making our own baby food purees. We use frozen veggies with a little formula and a whole lot of food processing. We pour the purees in to ice cube trays and freeze. Frozen veggie cubes are stored in freezer bags and thawed as needed. One cube microwaved about 30 seconds makes a pretty good meal.

Food experiment four: Oatmeal
Reaction: No noticeable preference between rice or oatmeal.

Food experiment five: Pumpkin.
Reaction: Yeah, that’s right. Peanut is now on his orange veggies. He’s had two gallon sized bags of pumpkin puree waiting for him for several months. Grandpa bought peanut a very large and very cheap pumpkin near Halloween. Since we didn’t get a chance to carve it, it became baby food. I split the pumpkin and threw out the innards. I steam baked the pumpkin for about an hour. Then let it cool, and purred the pulp.
Pumpkin is actually pretty watery. Normally I add a little formula to his veggies, but not pumpkin. Our doctor said to start with green veggies first, but if she hadn’t so instructed, his first food likely would have been the pumpkin. It pureed so smoothly. Pumpkin likes to blow bubbles in the pumpkin on his spoon. He has also timed a sneeze appropriately and managed to spray pumpkin all over both of us.

It’s pretty silly, but I think dinner time is becoming one of my favorite parts of the day. Despite the mess, I really look forward to it and hope peanut does too. If not, I know he loves the bath that follows—a close second for my favorite time of day.

Peanut's on a Schedule

Let me just say that life has gotten a skagillion times easier now that peanut has found a routine.

Going into parenting, I thought all those books that preached about scheduling your child were hog wash. I figured Peanut would let us know when he's tired, hungry.... No need to force him to eat just because the clock says it's time. I was not going to be one of those Nazi parents who force their kids to nap at 1:00 just because it was "nap time."

Oh how wrong was I. Live and learn. We started with a bedtime routine. Dinner, little play time, bath then bed. Nothing fancy. The more we've done this, the more he wants to bypass playtime for bath time. Peanut is a splashing and slippery baby who lives for bathtime.
He has always had a morning routine, because he needs to be fed before Mommy heads to work. The last trick was hammering down a mid-day habit, but that too has finally fallen in to place.
Sure we don't look at a clock and feed at exactly the same time every day, but we follow his cues too and we're usually within a half hour of the target time.
To be completely honest, it has made such a difference. He goes down for naps without as much struggle when he isn't super tired because he should have been napping an hour earlier. His naps have lasted longer. Most wonderfully, I now have quiet time with my husband before getting to bed so much earlier than I would have imagined myself doing.