Baby Led Weaning (BLW)

Last week, our baby turned 6 months old! I am part of the less than 1% that exclusively breastfeeds their infant for the first 6 months of their life. Most people either switch to formula (or supplement with it) or they start food earlier than that.

Yesterday, our baby had her first taste of real food. She had homemade applesauce (a little more tart than I would've liked but it was at my mother-in-law's house). She was given a baby spoon and a little applesauce (both on the spoon and on the tray). We didn't expect her to pick up the spoon and feed herself but we knew she was orally curious (as our doctor put it) so something would end up in her mouth. For months 6-12, a baby isn't meant to receive nutrition from food anyway. They are just to explore food and learn how to swallow it.

We decided to forgo the rice cereal because it doesn't provide much nutrition for the baby and gives them a lot of things, like sugar, they don't need. I know some people think this is what causes their baby to sleep through the night (which our baby still doesn't do, but that's okay) but there is no medical reason for this to be true. Doctors don't support that theory.

In baby led weaning, you don't give your baby store bought baby purees or stay up all night making your own. You simply give them real food. Today, Baby had a banana. We cut it into easy to handle pieces but we didn't smush it (although she did). This way she can get used to textures and the feel of food in her mouth.

This also lets your baby eat when they're hungry and not force feed them. It can get rather messy and I have a feeling Baby will need a bath every night after dinner but that's okay.

I am not trying to force this method on people but this is what works for us for this child. I know some people use this for some of their children but others just couldn't do it. It's different for each kid. Sometimes people do a combination of both purees and BLW. It's also important to know the difference between gagging and choking. Gagging is very common but not a bad thing. However, in an emergency, you will want to know what choking looks like. I am told there are YouTube videos out there for this.

You may want to do more research if you are interested in this method but here are some other important things:

• avoid foods that are the wrong size (grapes, nuts, peas, etc)
• avoid unsafe foods (egg yolks, nuts and nut butters, honey, etc)
• wait until they master the pincer grasp (forefinger and thumb) for some foods like Cheerio halves, grape quarters, etc

These are just very loose guidelines. I am in no way a medical physician or anything of the sort. Please consult your doctor and don't take anything I say as hard fact. 

Packing in a Carry On

I'm not sure if I have mentioned it, but last week, we went to the Club Med in Punta Cana (all expenses paid by David's family!). This was an amazing gift but the airline we went with didn't give us a checked bag for free. We aren't frequent flyers and we would be travelling with a baby so this was a big deal to us. To ease our minds, David's parents split a checked bag with us so we could travel with bigger liquids (like sunscreen!). On the way there, we did have everything in 3 carry ons but travelling through the airport with 3  carry ons, a stroller, a diaper bag, a backpack (personal item. My personal item was the diaper bag since Baby didn't get one), and an infant was a bit much. On the way back, we miraculously fit everything in two carry ons (plus all the other stuff) and put one of the carry ons in another one so we were down to two bags. I can't really explain how this happened since we were actually coming back with more stuff (our souvenirs and the amount of diapers used were more than even).

Here is a list of everything we took. The key is rolling your clothes and using all possible space (like inside shoes or even pockets). Some people go the extra step and put outfits in bags so they can easily find stuff and they claim it fits even more stuff this way. I wasn't about to drop 50 dollars on packing cubes (although I did hear good things about them) so we did without the bags. Our carry ons were also slightly smaller than the allowed size. I will leave out the things we put in the checked bag since that doesn't really count. I will also mention we were only gone 8 days but way overpacked, especially the Baby because you just never know how many outfit changes they'll require in a day. When we came home, we actually had a full suitcase of dirty clothes and a full suitcase of clean clothes. That's crazy (but made for easy unpacking when we got home)!

3 sets of pajamas for all 3 of us (so 9 total)
7 swim suits
4 pairs of sandals
1 pair of tennis shoes
1 pair of heels
16 pairs of underwear
60 diapers
4 pairs of socks
6 pairs of shorts
10 outfits for Baby
1 dress
1 pair of pants
18 t shirts
1 long sleeved shirt
14 nursing pads
1 gallon size bag packed to the gills of pads and tampons
3 bras
2 tank tops
2 books (each about 300 pages)
baby sun hat
2 swim diapers
1 pack of wipes (72 per pack)
7 burp cloths
baby sun shirt (with a floaty thing in it so it doesn't bend at all)
beach umbrella

So if you swap out 40 of the diapers and a few of the pads and tampons, but add in a beach towel, a coffee mug, a box with a jar of alcohol and two shot glasses, and a few other souvenirs, it becomes what we brought home. Maybe this isn't that impressive to you and I'm sorry I don't have pictures to show you just how much stuff this really is but I think it's amazing. If anything seems to be missing from the list, it was either in the diaper bag, backpack, or checked bag. I know it seems to sort of be cheating with the checked bag but even that bag was really small).

The only thing we did was roll all our clothes (individually, not in stacks like some people do), utilize ALL space, and squish everything down as we went.

Lots and Lots and Lots....Part 2

As you can see from the title, this is a part 2. Be sure to scroll down to read all about part 1. Part 1 is recipes. Part 2 is projects!

I have been busy making stuff! A while back, I had found a yard of the perfect fabric for my mom. She is obsessed with bikes and my fabric had vintage bikes all over it. I wasn't sure what to do with it for the longest time but I finally settled on a hanging toiletry bag. She loved it of course but I will mention, this was not easy to make. First of all, make sure you have a machine that can handle vinyl. I started this project on my mother-in-law's Bernina machine and that couldn't handle it. I ended up using my old, really heavy sewing machine (remember my Goodwill one?). That thing can handle ANYTHING but obviously most people don't have a 75 year old (seriously) machine  laying around. I suppose you could hand stitch if necessary. Here  is the tutorial. A few things got a little confusing for me but it still turned out okay! (Although I will admit, I am awful with binding.) I apologize for the bad, shadowy pictures but I was in a hurry.

This is the bag all rolled up and velcroed.

This is the inside of the bag. The colored strips are the zippers. There are 4 of them (it's kind of hard to see the top one since the gold blends in so well. I'm so lucky I can get zippers for 10 cents at our flea market!)

This is the back (the side you don't put stuff in).

 I have considered making myself one but like I said, it was really a lot of work and patience. It also didn't turn out perfect, especially because the bikes are a directional print and when I was assembling this, I wasn't sure which way everything was supposed to face (so if you notice in the second picture, the last pocket of bikes is upside down).

Next, I made a chinese waves pouch. The original pattern makes a really small bag so I made it bigger. I casted on 45 stitches and went until I ran out of yarn, sort of. I had used a sugar 'n cream yarn with stripes (notice that the stripes are different than the color variations). This was a VERY simple pattern to follow until the end. I had learned how to crochet in girl scouts but since then, I have completely forgotten how to do it. I assumed I could just make the i cord and add buttons (I needed more than one button since I made my pouch wider). Little did I know, the i cord is easiest when your yarn is still attached to your project. I was able to whip stitch the sides (although I do admit what the pattern calls for with the crocheting is much prettier) but still needed the closures. I finally had David make little twisted pieces to go around my hand-sewn on buttons. It works but next time, I'll come up with a new solution.

This is the perfect project for the amount of yardage that comes in a sugar 'n cream because you knit the pouch until you have one color stripe left in your ball of yarn. Then use that to finish it off with the crocheting and such. It's perfect! That makes these really cheap and the pattern owner even says you can sell them! I'm thinking of selling them at a craft fair next summer. It hardly took me any time at all to make (until my button closure dilemma)!

This is it closed. If you notice, it still doesn't quite work out with two buttons but I think it's the way I spaced them.

This is the pouch open. Please ignore my baby monitor. 

Lastly, I made a swim cover up for our upcoming beach vacation! We are going to a Club Med in the Dominican Republic (treated by David's grandparents. About 30 people are going in all!). I do not have a picture of this yet since I am technically still in the middle of it (and we leave this week! eek!!) but it's actually a very quick project. I was just having a hard time having a baby free minute that I could wrap this up ( no pun intended). This is the tutorial. It actually does not use any machine sewing or hemming, making this super easy! I did mess up a couple times but it was okay because I had two yards of fabric and ended up only needing about a yard and a half. The butt is still a little saggy but that is okay with me. It's very comfy and I can't wait to try it out at the beach! I suggest reading some of the comments below her tutorial if you are confused, especially when cutting the tank top holes. I was glad I had the extra fabric though because she asks for fabric scraps a couple times (for the straps and for wrapping around the straps) and without that extra half yard, I hardly had anything. Cotton scraps do not work for the braiding of the straps. I tried and it was a mess. Definitely use jersey scraps if you have them!

That is the end of all my updates! I hope that didn't get too crazy. So I'm getting ready for vacation now so obviously I won't blog for a while (at least a week and a half) but I hope these two posts (part one and two) will tide you over until you hear from me again!

Lots and Lots and Lots...Part 1

Once again, I got behind in my blogging. It has gotten a little more difficult since I can only use my husband's computer (and he takes it to work with him every day). Literally everything other computer in this house is broken (all 3!) so I have to wait til he gets home and for Baby to give me a break so...it just hasn't happened in a while.

A lot of things have happened in the past two weeks (two weeks, right?) so I'm going to split this up into an post about recipes and a post about things I have created! I'm so excited about all of it. This is my recipe post.

The first recipe I have is a side dish of mushrooms. I am actually not a big fan of mushrooms but I can tolerate them and I know they are good for me so I put them in lots of things. The picture of this recipe alone is what made me want to make them. I found it on pinterest and I just had to make it! Here is the recipe. I did make a couple changes.

• I used garlic powder instead of garlic cloves (we rarely have garlic cloves in the house)
• I used dried thyme rather than fresh thyme (again, we don't usually have fresh herbs in the house)
• We find it a waste to buy bread crumbs so we just toast our bread and then put it in our little food chopper. I used two slices, which gave us a LOT of bread crumbs but I actually liked all the extra. If you were trying to stick closer to the recipe, I'd only use one or maybe even a half.
• No lemon juice
• We also didn't pay attention to which way the stalks were facing when we fried them or baked them.

These were phenomenal! I would highly recommend them, even to people who don't care for mushrooms. I will make this recipe again and again. We had 3 people eating them with no leftovers, after using a whole package of mushrooms. We served them with spinach lasagna roll ups.

The spinach lasagna roll ups were also really good. My mom and husband were especially impressed with them. Another easy recipe. I happened to have ricotta and lasagna noodles on hand (which NEVER happens in this house) and I knew what I had to do. I did think the roll ups were a creative way to serve lasagna without actually serving lasagna. They also help great with portion control.

I left out the parmesan (surprise, surprise, we don't keep parmesan on hand) and just used extra mozzarella. We also used fresh spinach, sauteed til soft, rather than frozen. We used a whole jar of spaghetti sauce but I felt like that was a bit much (I'm not sure how that amount compares to the amount that was called for but I had no use for a little bit of a jar of sauce so I just automatically used the whole thing). I filled mine a little too thick so I did have extra noodles at the end but I just covered them in the extra sauce and it worked out fine. 

Also, my mom and I made 3 loaves of banana bread because we had a LOT of frozen bananas to bake with. A little trick I didn't know is that you can peel frozen bananas (unless you're smart enough to freeze them peeled) with a butter knife. It goes really quick and the frozen bananas still mix well in the dough. This recipe is super simple and the prep time is also really quick. You can easily leave out the chocolate chips. Next time, I might. They were good but I like banana bread without them too. I also have a tendency to butter my banana bread and that turned out a little weird with the chocolate chips. 

With each loaf of bread, I used 4 bananas. I did the first ones as a double batch (and obviously did the 3rd loaf by itself. 3 times the recipe wouldn't fit in my mixer). It had a great banana flavor but I didn't think 4 was overdoing it at all. Depending on the ratio of wet and dry ingredients, I bet you could get away with adding even more banana. 

Lastly, I need to document my recipe for cheesy broccoli rice casserole. I know I have mentioned it before but when I needed it, I couldn't find the recipe. As usual, I made a few changes.

• I always use shredded cheese rather than cheez whiz. That stuff just grosses me out.
• I use brown rice instead of white (since that takes 45 minutes on its own, I usually make a batch of it during the day and then throw it in the fridge until I am ready to use it with dinner. This method also works really well when you want to make fried rice.) 
• Sometimes I leave out the onion if I am trying to cut the prep time in half. When I do this, I occasionally add minced onion (spice) but not always. 

Okay I think I am done with recipes! I hope that didn't get too long. Now onto my post about my projects!