The Boy Can Eat

Last week, after Auric's belated 6-month check-up, we finally introduced him to food in solid form. What excitement! He was giddy, and seemed to think that the whole thing was hilarious and wonderful.

He got 3 days of just rice cereal mixed with breast milk. And the boy can eat! Late last week, I pulled some frozen containers of homemade pureed butternut squash from the freezer, labeled 12/08. Ahh, the memories of my baby food assembly line. He has taken to that as well. For the last few days, I've been feeding him twice-daily meals of about half a container of butternut squash and then mixing up rice cereal with the pumped milk until he seems full. However, I've been depleting my supply of pumped milk that I need for bottle feeding prior to his bath at night. So this morning I tested his tolerance for rice cereal mixed with water. And it worked. Pumped milk saved! Also, since the squash has a thin consistency, I thickened it with the rice cereal, and that was what he seemed to like the best.

We have the workings of a routine. He's been waking at 5 or 5:30 am, I nurse him and play with him for awhile. Then, if I can keep him up until his sister wakes up some time around 7, then I try to have us all at the table together, eating our breakfast. Then it's off to school with Thora. At night, I try to get the same family dinner experience again.

However, all this takes brain power (something that is running low in the wee hours of the morning and then again after a long day) and tons of preparation. (What feels like "tons of preparation" is really just being home at the right time, and having pulled a couple items from the fridge so they're room temperature. Not much, but I'm easily overwhelmed.) I feel less like a mom who is on top of things, and more like a frazzled lady in a game show where I'm supposed to hold a baby on one hip, talk through negotiations with a almost-tantruming toddler, while preparing a dinner for two with one arm. Picture inefficient trips from cabinets and drawers to table, a blur between fridge, microwave, and oven, all while jiggling the hungry boy and negotiating the toddler away from the edge of a tantrum.

It's not pretty. But it gets done.

Lessons in Doing it Yourself

Thora is a budding individual, complete with strong impulses to do things on her own. This new Thora often rears her head at times when I would prefer to be a hands-on Mom, e.g. when she boldly, one might even say, audaciously, crosses the wobbly, tight-rope-esque plank on the big kids' playground equipment at the park, which often catches me completely unprepared since this is the same toddler who thinks and over-thinks how to step off a ledge with a 2-inch drop. Or when, like pictured, she is determined to push her stroller. Most of the time she is pushing with her head down and doesn't notice that I'm steering. However, sometimes she does look up and then I can practically read her thoughts in that irritated expression. It says: "Mother!" And so I let go and watch as she immediately steers the stroller straight into somebody's fence.

But the other day, this new, determined Thora and her newfound will had unexpected results. Well not really all that unexpected, as you will surely guess after you read the next line. So Thora was drinking a smoothie... See, you probably know where this is going already right? I kind of knew too. However, Thora had NO idea.

So I've been making her smoothies and then pouring them back into the washed containers of the Stonyfield yogurt drink that she loves. (The Deception begins!) I bought a package of straws, too, so she can have a bit more control over the experience. I think it's pretty unpleasant for the both of us for me to have to hold the bottle to her mouth. I mean, I can never really tell how fast I'm pouring it into her mouth which always seems to result in her desperately slurping at the yogurt that keeps lapping just out of reach of her lips, only then to be drowned by a forced-guzzling.

Anyway, we were sitting there at the kitchen table, I was holding the container and the straw in place while she sucked down the smoothie. That is, until she started to push my hand away, first just away from the straw, and then away from the whole bottle. Of course, the thought going through my head was, "I ain't trying to hear this," and so I kept at it, trying to maintain a maximum amount of control with just my fingertips. But Thora wasn't having it, herself surely thinking, "I ain't trying to hear this, Mother!" And so finally, against better judgement, or at least, before I had covered in plastic all the surfaces in a 50-foot radius, I let go. I watched as she continued to drink, chug the smoothie, and in just a few brief seconds was convinced that that was all the learning curve she needed. Clearly I was on the very very bottom of my own learning curve. My lesson was that she hasn't learned her lesson. I mean, for pete's sake, I haven't learned her lesson. It wasn't too far in my past, like 3 months ago, that I was holding something liquid, and turned my wrist to look at my watch, and ta-dah! So, with neither of us having any clue where we were on our respective learning curves, and foolish with over-confindence, I walked away. Like 3 feet away, to put some of her lunch leftovers back in the fridge. And as I closed the fridge door, I looked up, and that's when I saw her arm, the one holding the smoothie, inexplicably jump, and the next thing you know... Well, I never had cable growing up. But somehow I caught glimpses of people on Nickelodeon getting "slimed." This is what, briefly, Thora looked like. She was coated in a pale orange seeping goo that completely masked half of her head, face, upper, and lower body. Initially, I was surprised that there could've even been that much smoothie left in there, even when full to the rim. And when I walked away, the container was 1/3 full, at most. So there she was, for a split second, blinking a heavily-coated eyelid, blowing a smoothie bubble from her parting lips, before the sobbing started. Essentially, a midday bath was called for. And I literally rung smoothie out of her shirt after I pulled it off of her. I guess we both have a lot of learning to do. But what is terrible was the thought that I so briefly entertained in the nano-second while I was registering what was happening: Where's the camera?

Baby Food and Mommy Drink

Tonight, while Sean watched a DVR-ed basketball game (poor Duke), I made Thora some butternut squash puree. And because the two wine bottle corks that we own have mysteriously gone missing, I had to finish off a bottle of wine in the process. It was pretty good wine, in fact, for being a Trader Joe's $3.99 special--Castelli Romani Rosso. My palate is not terribly sophisticated when it comes to wine. I like bold cabernets, for example, wines that kind of run my taste buds over. But it did the trick. Exactly what that trick is, I'm not sure. But I'm here sitting up at 11:05, feeling very loose of mouth, so there's that. Anyway, back to the baby food. I get such a satisfied feeling as I seal up these re-used Gerber baby food containers for Thora. I feel so efficient as I lay out the empty containers in assembly-line fashion and fill them up. I have brief fantasies of having created a friendly, but hugely successful wholesome foods business. Butternut squash is my favorite to work with because I just want to swim around in it after I'm done. So okay, that's probably the wine talking. And likely, comments like that wouldn't help my fantasy-business. But its jewel-like color, its shimmer, its translucence. It makes me think that I should go pull that Boston Adult Education catalogue out of the recycling bag and look up "Stained Glass for Beginners."