Random Liam Updates

It's been awhile since I've done a Liam update post, and he has quite a few new words!  Right now his words consist of:

Dog-dog, Woof, Jake, GG, Mommy, Daddy, More, Uh-Oh, Yum, No, No way, book

He's obsessed with finding pictures of dogs in books, and staring at our neighbor's dog who is frequently in their front yard across the street.

The kid can still eat like nobody's business.  Favorites right now include lasagna:

And quesidillas (which he insists on eating just like the rest of us, and gets mad if you cut them up):

We have to be careful to shut the pantry doors now, because someone has a habit of sneaking in there and stealing food.  See example picture below: he took a cereal bar out of the closet, stealthily took it into the playroom and apparently was planning on consuming it while riding his zebra. 

"You don't see anything....."

He can identify his hands, feet, toes, head, hair and nose.  

You might not be able to tell in the pictures, but his hair is getting much more blonde.  The last time we had him at the doctor, he weighed in at just a little over 25 pounds and he's currently in size 12-18 month clothing. 

He's been fully transitioned into the Toddler 1 room at school, and he's doing quite well!  They do circle time in that room, and they said he loves it.  They tell the kids it's time for circle time, and Liam will literally just throw down whatever he was playing with, run over to his spot, and plop down.  He "sings" along to the songs, claps his hands, and pays attention to story time and the lesson.  Adorable, right?? 

Things they don't tell you about breastfeeding.

• It hurts. Everyone may tell you that it can be painful, especially at first, but they're referring to the actual pain of breastfeeding from the baby latching on, sensitivity, etc...  I'm referring to the pain that occurs when you are nursing in the first few days after birth, the pain of your uterus contracting back to shape.  Of course, everyone would love for their uterus to return to normal, but sweetmotherofGod, I felt like I wanted to beg for an epidural for my waist up for the times I had to nurse Liam in those first 3 days or so.  I vaguely remembered being uncomfortable with Jake (but I was also all drugged up on the magnesium drip, so my entire memory of those first few days is very foggy), but nothing like what I had with Liam.  It was so bad that at one point on day 2, I actually asked a nurse if I was ok when she came by to do rounds. I really thought that I was hemorrhaging or something, it just didn't feel like what was going on could be considered normal.  Her response was, "Oh honey, totally normal with #2. In fact, it actually gets to be MORE painful for each child.  I just had a woman in here last week who was on baby #4; she was literally screaming into a pillow and clutching the bed rails with each feeding.  Could I get you some more ibuprofen, that would help!"  Um...yes, please to the ibuprofen, no thank you to baby #4 with the screaming, writhing pain.

• You will feel like you're starving to death.  If people think that pregnant women can put food away, they have never witnessed a breastfeeding mother do some serious damage to a pantry.  It makes sense; you can burn up to 700 calories a day from breastfeeding, so you have to replace that somewhere!  And I felt like I needed to replace those calories every hour or so.  I was hungry all.the.time.  My advice to new breastfeeding mothers is to have lots and lots of snacks nearby, and make sure you can easily consume them with just one hand.  Oh, and always check your baby's head after your snack sessions; I will not admit to the number of times I would find a stray piece of cheese or pretzel somewhere on the kids.

• It's hard to stop.  Liam easily dropped his mid-morning and mid-afternoon bottles the week of his 1st birthday (and didn't seem to miss nursing at those times a few days later when the weekend rolled around).  So that left us with him nursing when he woke up and at bedtime.  I didn't really have a plan for dropping either of those, but he actually stopped nursing at wake up on his own.  One day he just started playing with Jake when he woke up, never got fussy for it, and was content to just eat breakfast instead.  So we dropped that one and never looked back. He's now 13.5 months and still nursing before bedtime, and honestly, I don't know who between the two of us is the one holding onto that session.  I'm sure for him it's just become a part of his bedtime routine, and for me, it's become something that gives me guaranteed quiet time every evening, with this child who is becoming less and less of a baby with each passing day.  Could I stop soon?  Probably. Do I want to?  I'm not sure yet.

Liam's 1 Year Check Up

 Liam received a great report from his 1 year check up last week!  Here are the latest stats:

Height: 30.5 inches (75th percentile!)
Weight: 22.5 lbs (50th percentile)
Head circumference: 47 cm (70th percentile)

So, he's tall, average weight, and has a slightly larger than average head :)  (must be because he has a lot of brain to store)  He was right on track with everything, the doctor was pleased to hear how well he eats, and that he's crawling normally at this point.  He agreed that we could try to wean Liam off of the reflux meds at this point, and suggested that we initially stop giving him one dose and see how that goes for 10 days or so.  If all is well, then we can drop that one, too.  So we started right away!  He didn't have his evening dose for 3 days, and he was fine. Then yesterday, we forgot about giving him his medication until almost 11am.  At that point, it wasn't bothering him, so we figured we'd give it a shot to see what happened.  good news...nothing happened!  No crying, no more spit up than usual, nothing!  YAY!  I'm not getting my hopes up just yet, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.  You know your kid has been on medication for a long time when the pharmacist at Target knows you and your child by name.  (sorry, Katie...we'll still keep in touch!)

We also decided to cut back on his bottles last week, and even though he was pretty angry the first day according to his teachers, he was totally fine with it by the next day.  By the end of the week, he was skipping his morning bottle and content to have a snack at that time instead.  He was still taking his 3pm bottle, so they're going to cut that out this week.  I'm still nursing him in the morning and at bedtime, so we'll see where that takes us next week once he's transitioned totally out of his daytime feedings. 

Funny daycare story; Liam wasn't at school the day of his birthday, but the next day, I sent in some mini muffins for him to share with his friends during afternoon snack to celebrate.  The teachers made him a birthday crown, sang to him, then passed out the snacks at the tiny table where all of the kids sit.  Liam ate his muffin in .02 seconds, and started looking for more. There were extras, and they figured it was his birthday, so why not?  He ate muffin #2 in record time.  After that, he committed a major party foul and had to actually be removed from his own birthday celebration...he started swiping the muffins from all of his friends who were still eating (because apparently, not every baby hoovers their food right off of the table!)  Oops.  

Liam's 1st attempt at feeding himself with a spoon.....

It was messy, but he gets an "A" for effort!

11 months down, 1 to go.

Liam is going to be ONE in a month from today...unbelievable, right?  I was looking back at my posts from this time last year, and it was funny to read this one from April 18th, where I stated that I had a dr's appointment that day and was told that we would go ahead and plan for an induction at 39 weeks.  HA!  Liam (and my blood pressure and doctor!) had other ideas, and he made his appearance at 36 weeks, 6 days instead.

We've dropped all purees at this point, and he's pretty much eating whatever we have for dinner.  He still seems to have a problem with textures of some food (cottage cheese, for example, is hit or miss....sometimes he gobbles it up, others he gags).  He kept spitting out strawberries up until this past weekend, when he finally gave one a chance...then he proceeded to shovel the whole pile into his mouth.  Other favorite foods include hummus, mum-mums, and yogurt.  He is notorious at school for swiping the food off of the other babies' trays...they sometimes have to move him away from them so that he doesn't steal it all. 

He has started crawling, or at least his own version of it.  He can move all around (he's very speedy!) but instead of a traditional crawl, he either drags his right leg or kind of hikes it up in the air.  It's kind of hard to explain.  Here's a video of him demonstrating his signature move (it also contains a good shot of his hair that is in a constant state of looking like a mad scientist in the back-I love it!):

He does a lot of babbling, his constant noises are mama, dada, geh (we're not sure what that means), and I'm 99% sure that he is saying doh-doh and meaning "dog", he's been saying it pretty consistently when looking at Gracie.

Really, baby?  Can't you see it's my naptime?  I am exhausted from all of the important work I do all day around here.

He claps, and waves, does the sign for "more", and will pull blankets or toys up over his face and play peekaboo with you, and he's all around a snuggly, perfect, adorable little guy.  :) 

Cue "Pomp & Circumstance"!

My baby just graduated!!

I probably don't need to tell you that the transition was harder on mama than it was on Liam.  I may, or may not have cried when I proudly hung his diploma up on the fridge.

We loved the teachers in Infant 1 but knew he was ready to move in.  He was the oldest baby in the room by more than a month, so the teachers said he was starting to get bored.  (they typically don't move them to the next room until they crawl, which he's not yet, so that's why he was still in the younger room)  But we're also hoping that maybe seeing all of the other mobile babies will motivate him to get moving! 

He'll be 10 months old on Saturday, and I just packed up a lot of his 6-9 month clothes last weekend.  He's still loving food, though he's starting to reject purees, so we've moved on to a lot of finger foods (which I have to say I'm very grateful for-I was really getting tired of making purees and having to spoon feed him everything).  So far he's had: chicken, all kinds of diced veggies, blueberries, bananas, crackers with hummus, cheerios, waffles, pancakes, tacos, and pasta.  He will occasionally do the sign for "more" but most of the time, he's just too impatient and finds that banging the tray and yelling is a much more effective way of communicating :) 

Alright now STOP-Banana time! 

There's a hummus among us.

We had a brief glimmer of hope that his reflux was starting to go away, but then the whole mess started up all over again in the past week.  I gave it a few days, thinking it was a fluke, but unfortunately, that's not the case.  After talking to the pediatrician's office, they advised that I increase his meds again so he went from 2.5 ml of zantac twice/day to 3 ml twice/day.  The nurse could probably tell that I sounded discouraged on the phone and assured me that even though we have to increase it now, it's still a good sign that he probably is getting better with it since he had been on that previous dose for a good 3 months now, whereas before, we were increasing his dose every 4 weeks or so.  Baby steps, I suppose! 

It's hard to believe that he'll be a year old in just 2 months!  The obsessive planner in me started to gather ideas for his birthday party months ago...pinterest certainly helps to feed my addiction to gathering up ideas!

6 month report

We had Liam's 6 month well visit earlier this week, and everything looked great.  Here are his stats (at 6.5 months, technically):

16 lbs, 14 oz (25th percentile)
27.5 inches tall (75th percentile)
44.5 cm head circumference (50th percentile)

I looked back at Jake's stats from his 6 month appointment, and he was 17 lbs, 10 oz and 27 inches tall.  So Liam is a bit lighter, but 1/2 inch taller.

Overall, he's been very consistent in his growth and they were pleased with his development and all of that good stuff.  We discussed his reflux, which much to my dismay, has not improved.  I was really hopeful that we would be weaning OFF the meds by this point, not increasing them.  But he's still on 2.3 mL of zantac, twice per day.  We discussed the possibility of needing to see a GI specialist at Children's, but the dr. didn't feel it was totally necessary at this time, since Liam is gaining weight appropriately for his age, and the zantac is working when it's the correct dose.  He said it would be something that he would consider down the road, if we max out on the zantac dose or he were to start losing weight.  But for right now, he just doesn't feel that it would be necessary to send him there to have procedures done that probably won't tell us too much aside from just verifying that yes, he does indeed have reflux.  He said that while "most" babies start to outgrow it by 6 months, there are some who don't outgrow it until closer to 12 months; I guess we just fall into the latter category. 

On a lighter note, he has started to sit up completely unassisted!  I think I mentioned a few weeks ago that he started doing the whole "tripod" sitting with his hands in front of him....then it was just like one day out of the blue last week, I put him down on the floor, he lifted his hands, sat straight up and hasn't looked back since.  I was proud of course, but also sad in some ways since it's just one more milestone that he's reaching that means he's becoming less and less of a baby all the time.  At least he's not mobile...YET! 

Now that he is spending more time in an upright position, Jake has been excited to play with him a bit more, which is really cute.  He'll bring him a bunch of toys, line them up in front of him and start talking to him about what the toys do, he'll show him how to play with them, and reminds Liam that many of the toys were his when he was a baby :)  Here they are playing with one of Liam's Christmas gifts (thanks, Martini Family!)

We also gave him a sippy cup the other night after dinner, mostly just to see what he'd do with it.  I filled it with water and handed it to him, and after examining it for a moment, brought it up to his mouth.  At first I was impressed, thinking he was drinking it, then I realized he was using the spout as a teether :)  Hey, whatever keeps him occupied!

He's still loving his food...since I last wrote about it, we've introduced green beans, avocado, sweet potatoes and apricot.  This is what happens nearly every single night at dinner when his food is all gone and he sees me put the dish in the sink:

THIS IS SO NOT FAIR!

Happy 1/2 year!

It's hard to believe that Liam has gone from this...

to this....

in just 6 months.

I shouldn't be surprised at how quickly the time goes since this is my second time around, but it never ceases to amaze me.  He's really starting to develop such a little personality; he's such a happy little guy and his giggles are contagious.  

He doesn't sit up unassisted yet, but if you kind of put him in place using his little arm as a kickstand, he can prop himself up for a few seconds.  I sense that his love affair with the bouncy seat is coming to an end, as his interest in it lasts for only a few seconds at this point.  He is much more of a fan of sitting upright these days, so he's really been enjoying the exersaucer, jumperoo and bumbo.

We don't go for his check up until the first week of December (somehow we fell behind on these visits), but my at home estimate using our scale the other day put him at around 16 lbs.

He's still struggling with the reflux, despite the fact that we started him on solids a month ago.  Unfortunately, the quantity of the spit up remains the same, the consistency of the spit up is the only difference.  It also started bothering him again last week, he was doing his usual symptoms of needing to increase the dose (which is why I weighed him at home) so I called the office late last week, he had definitely outgrown the previous dose.  We increased it right away, hopefully we'll see some results soon. 

So even though the food isn't helping his reflux, he looooooooves it.  His little feet start kicking a million miles a minute and we can't ever spoon it in fast enough!  So far, he's had carrots, peas, squash, applesauce, bananas, pears and peaches.

Happy 6 months, my little man!

My 1st and last experience with squash.

Remember my post last week, raving about how easy it is to make baby food?  Yeah, I hadn't ventured into squash yet.  I made a lot of Jake's baby food, but never tried squash for him, he just got good old jars.  I figured I'd give it a shot this time around, because my father-in-law gave me 2 squashes (squashi?  squashes? just squash like deer?  what is the plural?) out of his garden, and then Aldi had them for .97 each, so I figured why not?  (3 of 4 featured here, I had 1 butternut & 3 acorn)

Let me tell you why not...first, I nearly severed a piece of my finger trying to cut them in half.  It was like trying to saw through a boulder.  Once I did manage to cut through them, I was faced with nasty piles of guts and seeds.  I am seriously repulsed by those types of things (which is why I have successfully avoided pumpkin carving every year).  The initial scoop of guts & seeds wasn't bad, but I had to do a lot of digging/scraping to get all of the strings out.  GAG.

THEN, after I baked them for almost an hour, I had to peel off the skin and remove all of the "meat" to blend up.  Again, it was just really gross to me.  And not an easy task, that skin is stubborn. 

 It at least got easier once I got the meat out, it was just business as usual...tossing it in the food processor and pushing a button.

So, the 4 squash(es)(i) cost me a total of about $2 since 2 of them were free and I got about 32 ounces of baby food out of them.  Had I bought those in a jar, it would have cost me closer to $7 or $8 for that amount.  Hopefully this is the only squash he'll ever need while eating purees, since it did make quite a bit...because that will be the last time he gets a homemade batch!

Nom-nom-nom.

Now that we're doing solids with Liam, it was time to blow the dust off of the food processor and fire that thing back up!  I made a bunch of Jake's food when he was a baby, and it was so easy that I had no hesitation in doing it again.  So far, we've made peas, carrots, peaches, bananas and pears.  (and so far, he's loved all of that food)  Here is a quick picture tutorial, just in case you're curious about making your own food.

Cook the veggies as you normally would:

Catch the water when you drain the veggies to use for thinning the food out once it's in the processor (the water has some of the nutrients that are lost in the cooking process).  I find it's easiest to just put a mixing bowl with a pouring spout directly under the strainer:

Put peas into processor, add water as necessary...blend it up!

Once you have the right consistency, spoon the food into ice cube trays (each cube is about an ounce), cover with saran wrap and freeze:

Pop the frozen cubes out of trays, place into ziploc bags for freezer storage:

So simple!!  And so cost effective---the bag of peas was $1.06, and I got 22 oz of food out of it.  Earth's Best baby food runs around .60/jar for stage 1 baby food (2.5 oz), so 22 oz of jarred baby food would run me about $5.40.  That's a savings of $4.34 for less than 10 minutes of work.

Peas, please!!

4 month check up and FOOD

Weight: 13 lbs, 14 oz (about the 25th percentile)
Height: 26" (75th percentile---he's tall & thin!)
Head circumference: 42.5 cm (50th percentile)

I looked back, Jake was heavier at this age (15 lbs, 3 oz) but a bit shorter (25 & 1/4 inches), so they're pretty similar in size so far.

The appointment went well, he's right on track for everything which is always reassuring to hear. He flipped from back to belly the other day, but hasn't done it since then.  He's also done belly to back a few times, but overall just doesn't seem to be too interested in rolling.

Jake had a pretty decent flat spot by this age, so I was relieved to hear that Liam's head is "beautifully rounded".  

The doctor said it would be fine to start solids whenever we felt comfortable and whenever we felt that Liam was ready.  We've had him at a chair at the table for a few weeks and while he's not swatting at our food or anything, he's certainly shown more of an interest since being up there with us.  The doctor also mentioned that many babies get relief from their reflux and less spit up once they start solids...that was all it took to convince us to give it a go!! :) My clothes and my carpeting will thank me if that's true....

He was a bit fussy most of the afternoon from his shots, so I wasn't sure if he would be all that into trying out the cereal for the first time, but I figured we could offer it and if he didn't seem interested, we'd try again next week.  Well, not only was he interested, he consumed the entire bowl of cereal, then cried when it was all gone.  SUCCESS!

 

 

 

First bite, a bit unsure....

Hey mom, let's get some more of that going here!

Aaand, here's what happened when we were pretty much out of cereal, trying to scrape together one last bite....

In other news, we pulled out the exersaucer last weekend and said goodbye to the swing (he's never really been into it, anyway) I have to stuff a blanket around him to kind of prop him up, but he seems to enjoy it.

Why do you always have that thing in my face?? 

Who Wants Baked Beans??

Jake does!!

As I've mentioned in previous posts, Jake likes food. A lot. Here he is chowing down on his new favorite food, baked beans, while making some, um....approving noises.

Cooking with Emmy

Wait, don't run away! I'm not burning anything, I promise!

I've discovered my new favorite style of cooking...pureeing. Yep, I've started venturing into making my own baby food! (I must say, it is MUCH easier than cooking regular food!) Before I get into how easy this is, let me tell you a few of my past cooking mishaps:

-a recipe called for "refrigerated linguine"; naturally, I went to the grocery store, bought a box of linguine and stuck it in the fridge. My mom was over one day and we were trying to figure out what to make for dinner; I enthusiastically suggested this recipe and produce the box of linguine directly out of my refrigerator. Needless to say, my mom got a good laugh out of that one.

-While attemping to be all "Suzy Homemaker" during my maternity leave, I decide to make cupcakes just for fun. My cupcake pan only holds 12 cupcakes, but the box makes 24, so I just filled the little cupcake tins up as far as they would go and the leftover batter went into a small square cake pan. I was really proud of my quick thinking, until I pulled the product out of the oven, only to discover that they looked like cupcakes on steroids and had taken over the entire pan. Determined to make the most of it, I decided to go ahead and ice them (and my small cake) anyway, only no one ever told me that you should let stuff cool off before attempting to ice. My cake looked like someone let a rabid dog get a hold of it. :(

-And last, but not least, Brian & I had our friend Olivia over for dinner one night....while chatting away with her, I was putting some frozen twice-baked potatoes into the oven (you know, the kind that come pre-stuffed in a box, you just plop them onto a baking sheet?) when Brian interrupts our discussion to inform me that I was putting the potatoes on the sheet upside down. I was adamant that I was doing it right, for some reason, I thought for sure you put the skin side up! Brian then pointed out that if I did that, the cheese & stuffed part would bake onto the sheet and make a big, burned mess. Oops. (Liv was not surprised by this incident---she had Cooking Class with me in high school...my group always put me in charge of making the Kool-Aid to go along with the meal, I'm not sure why....)

So, back to my latest cooking adventure...you may be thinking to yourself, "If she can't even cook dinner for herself, why is she trying to cook for her baby?" I'll tell you why...baby food is expensive. It may not seem like it when you're looking at the individual cost, but add up what you're spending over time and it's quite a bit! We've been using Earth's Best and the cheapest I've found it is at Walmart (about .48 for the Stage 1 jar--he gets about 2 meals out of that) So instead of doing that, I started buying bags of frozen veggies (for about $1), steaming 1/2 bag, pureeing and freezing and viola, meals for the Jake Man! A 1/2 bag makes about 12-14 meals!! Much more cost-effective.

For any moms looking to venture into this (and clearly if I can do it, anyone can) I have been using www.wholesomebabyfood.com as a resource for many of my questions. So far I have stocked our freezer with peas, carrots, pears and bananas!

Food for Thought

Jake's teacher let us know that he was getting hungry in between bottles at school and seemed to want to eat in the " big boy chairs" when the other babies were getting their mid morning snack. So...I packed up a box of oatmeal & sent it in with some apples yesterday....this was the rave review that Jake got on his daily report card:


9:00am: bottle (finished all)


11:20am: oatmeal and apples (ate all of it, seemed to really enjoy it! we also gave him some water in a sippy cup, which he loved)

3:30pm: bottle (finished all)


Teacher Comments: Jake really seems to like food.


Well, I could have told you that!! :) He's our little piggy!! I just hope that he keeps up his great eating habits; both Brian & I were very picky when we were little (ok, so I still am, to a degree, but whatever!)


Here he seems to be saying, "Give me food NOW!"

Summer Vacation

We took a trip to visit the in-laws over the weekend; I'm classifying it as a vacation for a few reasons:


-we took vacation days to make it a long weekend
-I ate whatever I wanted
-Nana took Jake every morning so that we could sleep in (it was glorious)
-we went swimming (see next post for details on Jake's first swim lesson)
-I FINALLY saw "Sex & The City" (LOVED it! and I love Brian for taking me to see it, totally against his will...though I caught him laughing quite a few times....)


We had a great time and Jake had a few adventures and quite a few visitors. Aunt Reen & Cousin Sarah came over Friday night...Jake loved hanging out with them because they happened to be there just in time to feed him dinner.



Brian's BFF Ed and his fiancee Sarah came over to visit as well, Jake enjoyed snuggling with Sarah before bedtime.



The highlight of the weekend for Jake was probably getting his first taste of sweet potatoes. After a funny look on his face during the first bite, he then gobbled it down. He probably would have finished the whole jar had I let him, but being the slightly paranoid mommy that I am, I didn't want to overdo it at first. I hope he keeps up these great eating habits!!