Making My Own Baby Food

So far I've had a lot of success with making my own baby food - even though I've only made 2 things!  I absolutely love both of the baby food cookbooks that I had ordered.  Both have a lot of variety in recipes (and obviously some crossover) and also are easy to follow.  I'm hoping to expose Quinn to as many different foods as possible so that she won't end up to be as picky an eater as I am!

We've decided to attack the solid foods thing in our own way.  We started with just rice cereal, then we added some pre-made baby food that I had in the house (it was a triple fruit one) in with the rice cereal, then I made my first baby food (peas!) and we mixed that in with her cereal.  The peas were interesting!  Q wasn't so sure the first night, but the consistency of the peas with the cereal was a little too runny for her I think.  But she did eat the whole thing!  The next few nights were better and she just chowed down on the peas without any funny faces like the first night!  Tonight I made my second batch of baby food - apple and pear puree with cinnamon.  One of the books that I have said not to be afraid to add seasonings to the baby food - I think it actually said why do we, in North America, say that it's OK to only feed babies bland food when around the world it's standard to feed the babies exactly what the parents eat (e.g. curry in India).  So I'm looking forward to this!

Face full of peas!

First batch of homemade baby food - sweet peas!

Batch #2 - apple and pear puree with cinnamon

Giggling Baby Girl!

I finally got a semi-decent video of Quinn laughing!  I had to video her from the side because if she sees the phone she usually halts whatever she's doing!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Things are going well so far with solids.  Quinn is loving the rice cereal and is starting to open her mouth the second that she sees the spoon go into the bowl...which is quite hilarious!  I ordered a couple of books today off of Amazon for making your own baby food, which I'm pretty excited about.  Our friend Susan recommended one of them to me ("Top 100 Baby Purees") and the other one that I bought ("Cooking For Baby") had some great reviews.  I have a Baby Bullet and I'm itching to get it out!  It's still so surreal seeing Quinn sitting in her high chair eating cereal...she's growing up so quickly!

Speaking of growing up, we've decided that now is the best time for Quinn to start sleeping in her own room.  As I think that I have mentioned before, we've been doing kind of both rooms (ours and hers) up until now.  Quinn's getting much better at being able to go to sleep on her own as opposed to always nursing to go to sleep, so that's such a big step in the right direction.  She doesn't take a soother, despite our best efforts (we tried 5 different types!), but I'm sure that we'll be thankful later since we won't have to wean her off of it.  We have a video monitor as well for her room, so it's definitely useful!  Whenever we hear her make a noise, I just flip to the video screen to see if she's actually awake, or just shifting positions.  It's crazy how you just get a feeling to determine when your little one is ready to eat solids and sleep on her own!

Here is a picture of Quinn's 3rd outfit of the day...she managed to pee out of the front of one (don't know how she managed that!) during her nap and pooped out of the back of the other one (both were lovely pink outfits for Valentine's Day)...so I decided that her "I'd rather be naked" onesie was perfect for the rest of the day. :P

And here are a couple of videos of seeing Quinner right after she woke up in the morning and after her morning nap! :)

We Started Solids Today!

I know that it's been a while since I have updated the blog, so I'll try to make sure that I don't leave anything out!

The last couple of weeks we've been making some great progress with Quinn's nap schedule.  She has to wear her boots/bar for nighttime and naps for the next couple of years, and we've finally been able to really pick up on her cues for when she wants to nap so that we can put her boots on.  She usually takes her morning nap around 10ish (with usually about half an hour on either side to start her nap) - that nap usually doesn't last too long, but sometimes she surprises us!  Her afternoon nap is usually around 2 (again, with half an hour or so on either side to start it) - this nap usually lasts longer.  We've been putting her in her crib to nap so that she gets used to it.  She's still sleeping in our room in her playpen...but that's going to change soon!  Q's also getting a bit better at crying herself to sleep when she's getting tired and after she has a full belly.

Sleeping beauty and her diaper butt

Also on the sleeping front, Q's been going to sleep a lot easier at nighttime.  She usually falls asleep during her last feed (and we know it's going to be the last one by how much she rubs her eyes!), and then easily goes down in her playpen.  Sometimes she gives a little whimper and might roll over onto her tummy, but then she's quiet and sleeps pretty well.  I've only had to get up once a night with her (most of the time), so I'm wondering if she'll sleep a bit more soundly now that we have started solids!

YES!! We started solids (rice cereal) with Quinn today!  She's at the 5 1/2 month mark, so we started her a couple of weeks early, but she seemed to be ready...and so was I!  We bought a high chair yesterday for her and we're off to the races!  Things were a little unsure at first, as Quinn was quite hungry and did not like having to sit still to eat this new food.  So I had to nurse her first to get her calmed down a bit...and then we had to use her glow worm as distraction to make her even happier before we managed to get her to eat some cereal well.  By the end of the bowl she was opening her mouth for the cereal and really seemed to be liking it!  It's definitely going to be a bit of an adjustment to add this into our routine, but we'll get there!

Here are 3 videos and some pictures from the cereal day!  The first video shows her PO'd time, the next one she's getting the hang of it, and the 3rd video is how proud she is! :)  We're proud too!

Pretty girl in her new high chair!

Mmmmmm cereal

Not too sure if she likes what's going on...

Trying to help me with the spoon

Happy Birthday, Daddy!

Today is Quinn's Daddy's 29th birthday!  Here are the pictures that I took and had framed for him: