Six Feet Under the Table

Do you have a baby (or babies) and own an Infantino Fresh Squeezed Filler Station? OR, are you one of my bajillion pregnant FaceBook friends, looking for something cool that you just might need to add to your registry? This thing might be the greatest thing since sliced bread. It's simple to use, and even easier to clean. Over the weekend, I said I was going to add recipes. Well, it only took me two days (a record, perhaps?), but I finally got around to doing it! Howsabout we start with something sweet, shall we? Tonight I'm working on the savory. But a few hours ago, I whipped up some sweet recipes that I'm sure Baby Boy will love. Tell me if you make any of these concoctions! Obviously, these ingredients can be adjusted to make more. (NOTE: each squeeze pouch is 4 oz.) Wanna know what I'm making for the savory dishes? You're just going to have to wait and see! Forgive the awful photo. The natural light was gone by photo time. Applesauce What baby do...

For Christmas, my parents bought me one of those Infantino food pouch filler stations. I've been dying to get my hands on it. Now that Baby Boy has mastered the art of sucking food out of those super-convenient pouches, I'm ready to stop buying them and make them myself. Fun fact about pouches: Tyler Florence is the chef behind the baby food brand, Sprout. And Mr. Florence just happens to be my favorite chef EVER. So naturally, that's basically the only brand of food pouches I buy for Baby Boy. Luckily, they go on sale a lot. Though honestly, I probably have only bought 6 total since Baby Boy started eating solids. I just don't enjoy buying baby food. I have this weird need to make things myself. To know exactly what's in it. I guess I figure if I can't provide the milk he needs, at least I have control over this. It's a control-freak's dream. Anyway, back to my story. I took the filler station out of the box, examined the contents, and started loo...

On challenging days at work, I miss him. So I have someone send me a photo of whatever it is he is doing at that moment, and it makes everything better. Here was this morning's photo: And I think about all the things about him that make me smile. Like how he drinks his morning bottle lying down, knees to the ceiling, feet on the bed, skinny legs angled so his adorable knees rest gently together. And how when he first wakes up, he's so out of it that he stumbles over to the side of the crib like a drunk. How he picks up his food with his pointer and thumb, then uses four fingers to shove it into his mouth. And subsequently gags himself and alarms me. How sometimes, at night, J and I will stand outside of his bedroom door listening to him play with his stuffed animal friends. How every time I look at him, I see glimpses of someone else: my older sister (mostly), J, J's brother, my dad's mom, my mom. How one little person can look like so many people at one t...

I feel like a new woman. For the past four nights in a row, I've gotten 7 to 8 uninterrupted hours of sleep—the first time since October. How did I get to be so lucky, you ask? Two reasons: sleep training and pump weaning. We went to the doctor last week and asked if it was normal for a 9 month old to wake up three times to eat. His response? Uh... no. So we were given strict instructions on when to feed him and how to let him cry it out. It took three nights filled with three-hour-long crying sessions. (Will, not me... thank you, NyQuil.) We were told it would take 10 - 14 days. It took four. Baby Boy is awesomely sleeping through the night... for 13 hours almost straight. And then takes three 1-2 hour naps during the day. Bliss, my friends. This is bliss. On the other side of things, I'm ending my relationship with my breast pump. I just can't do it any more. I pumped exclusively for two months. (One of my rockstar mommy friends went longer than two months. You know w...

I'm out of control, and it's embarrassing. My diet is perhaps the worst it's ever been. My daily sugar intake is beyond acceptable. And I know that I need to knock it off. But I don't want to enough, I guess. I see the number on the scale go down, and I think, "See? I can eat ice cream with magic shell every night. No problem!" But it's not just the ice cream with the magic shell. It's the coffee with creamer when I start the day. It's the fruit snacks and granola bars I eat with lunch. It's the coca cola... the liter bottle that I sip on for a couple days because it was cheaper than the 20 oz. It's the string cheese and nutella-slathered toast. The ranch dressing. The candy. The potato chips. The movie theater popcorn. The crappy restaurant food. (It's even the occasional apple/spinach baby rice puff—5 for baby, 1 for me... 5 for baby, 1 for me...) And it's EVERY day. I finally went grocery shopping and cooked my own dinner the...

Now that Baby Boy is sleeping through the night, I feel like my brain is a lot less static-y. I'm noticing so much more now. Like I'm really present, watching with eyes wide open. And it's amazing. My love is growing so much that I actually feel like I could explode. It's overwhelming. And it's awesome. So since I feel like the first 8 months have been riddled with frustrations and amIdoingsomethingwrongs, this THIS is what I've been waiting for. This moment when I am watching him learn, figure things out, sleep, eat, even poop… all these things we take for granted. All these things we forget have a learning curve. Here's what I now know (and love) about Baby Boy: 1. He needs to know how things work. He has a dog xylophone on wheels. He'll bang on the keys, and pound the bars with the bone-shaped mallet. But what he really likes to do is flip the whole thing over and examine the wheels. He still softly moves his fingers along everything he can. ...

This morning J and I talked about the nursing situation. We made a difficult-for-me-to-make decision to stop nursing. The reason is simple: Baby Boy doesn't nurse, get bored, and then bite. He immediately uses me as a chew toy, and he refuses to latch. But he takes a bottle so well. Very well. In fact, he now prefers it. But we aren't switching to formula. Instead, I am pumping all day every day to supply his needs. And since I do that twice a week at work, it really hasn't been a burden. I think I've got a good schedule down, so right now, this works. Baby Boy now sleeps until 4a! J feeds him his 4a bottle, I get up at 5 to pump, go back to bed for 15 minutes, then on the days I have to drive to work, I get up at 6 and get ready for the day. At first, more sleep meant I was more tired. But today, I feel completely rested. This weekend or next week, I will be posting a babysitting or nanny job on a caregiver website. I'm nervous and don't want to do it. But ...