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stuff and stuff*
Is it normal for a nine month old to eat more than an adult? Baby Bug has a huge appetite! She just shovels the food in. She keeps me hopping trying to think of new things to let her eat. My favorite foods are things that she can pick up with her fingers because this slows her down a bit. Pasta is great. So is buttered waffle and toast and really slippery pieces of banana. But the problem with letting her feed herself is that she just inhales the stuff. She has no teeth so I can’t really tell her to chew her bites but is it normal to gum it twice and then swallow? She worries me, this baby. I’m afraid I’m raising one of those hamburger swilling pigs from a Carl’s Jr. commercial. Her appetite is voracious!
She can eat a whole cup full of macaroni and cheese, some bits of leftover chicken, a fourth of cheese sandwich, two cubes of squash mixed with rice cereal, about a zillion sips of apple juice mixed with water and the crust off a slice of pizza! (Broken into baby pinky sized pieces of course).
Yet she has no appetite for anything pureed. Still. I can only get her to eat her homemade baby food squash by mixing it with plain yogurt. She loves yogurt. Good thing too because back during the great illness of 06 I wasn’t producing much milk and I was really worried that Baby Bug might not be getting her vitamins. But things are working again now.
But I didn’t really want to blog about food. That’s just the picture I had handy. I wanted to blog about how I didn’t listen to you all about taking it easy. I worked like a mad woman yesterday and cleaned my house from top to bottom. It felt so good. After letting things go haywire for three weeks straight it felt good to have a clean carpet again. The laundry is done (thanks to my mom), the groceries are bought and put away (also thanks to my mom), the beds are made, the bathroom is clean, the cat litter and cat food is vacuumed up off the carpet… all is well again. Sigh……
And I’m fine! I am! Really! I thought I might have pulled a stitch trying to put away a 20 pound bag of rice in the cupboard where the water heater is (I know! But I have no other place to stow it!!!) but I’m fine. Just a little twinge and it was gone. I lift Baby Bug all day long and sometimes I even hoist her onto my hip that is dangerously close to incision number four. But it’s fine! It barely hurts! Maybe I didn’t even have surgery. Maybe it was all a scam. Maybe they just cut some surface cuts on my skin and charged my insurance a whole whopping lot of money. Cause I don’t feel anything.
I’m thanking God and moving on. It’s good to be healthy again. For a time there I thought I might have to live the rest of my life with pain. It was something I had to consider. I have a friend who has had serious back surgery and pain is a daily thing for her. I am in awe of that. I couldn’t do it. I hate the thought of being dependent on medication just to get through. But this is how it really is for a lot of people. So if anything this whole ordeal has taught me to be thankful.
I’m thankful but not necessarily smart. I didn’t rest a bit. We even went to the park yesterday. I had to put Baby Bug in the sling for a few minutes too (on top of my stitches!!!) just so I could get the stroller out of the trunk without having to put her down on the cement to play with oil stains and broken glass. It was a tiny bit uncomfortable but not that bad.
I miss the sling. The stroller is great but I don’t get to see her moving her arms up and down when she gets excited. She’s way out there in front of me behind the massive collapsing shade thing. If I want to look at her I have to stop walking and walk around to the front of her. I loved the sling because she was close to me. Like my own personal little friend, listening to every word I said as we ambled down the street. My mom thinks I’m nuts that I like to harness a sack of potatoes to my chest and take a walk. But I do. It’s just easier. Maneuvering a stroller up and down curbs, in between people is kind of a pain. It just doesn’t fit everywhere. Also it’s a pain in the neck to push up a hill. I’m much better at hiking up hills with something strapped to me than I am pushing something that wants to roll back onto me.
So maybe I’ll have to look into some kind of back pack. Or maybe I just need to find less hilly places to walk.
Sigh… I know this is a boring post. I wish I could hire a babysitter so I could have more time to be witty. But I guess that’s not really a high priority on the list of things to budget for.
*I think I used that title before… but again, no time for wittiness…
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the 3am rambly sicky post
You’d never guess it from the pictures but Baby Bug and I are feeling a little bit under the weather. So much for nursing for the first year of life and not getting sick. I think this is her third cold. I could be wrong though. They say congestion during the first month is totally normal. Either way, being sick is the pits. Being sick and getting new teeth is the double pits. Just like my ugly arm pits in the pictures above.
But don’t worry about us, we’re fine. We plug on through illness like super troopers. Baby Bug is still a lot of fun. She doesn’t let the sniffles or a wheeze get her down. She must have a milder version of this bug than I do because I feel like %#@. I’m just worried that the next stage of my normal routine of sickness, which is coughing like crazy, is going to be a problem. I might have to actually sleep in the other room! Gasp!
You may have gathered that I’ve been sleeping on the floor in the Bug’s room. (No more fleas. We killed ’em dead!) I have a futon there so it’s not so bare bones as it was those first few months. I gave up on the 70’s crib because I couldn’t sleep thinking about her suffocating all night. But the real reason is it was just so much hassle feeding her at night, like I like to, and worrying about waking Toby up. Toby may be a night owl but he does go to bed for just a few hours before I get up and those are the hours that both of us struggle with being polite to each other. We’re trolls when we’re half asleep. I know, excuses excuses. I don’t know why I like to sleep in the other room. I just do. Romance Schmomance. I promise, when she’s a year old (only 3 months from now) I will try and sleep in my old bed again. That’s my plan.
The 70’s crib is still there though. Toby won’t let me get rid of it. He hopes we could all sleep together in the same room like a happy family someday. I might use it if we have company and I give up my futon for guests to sleep on. I took out the super-tall bumper pad that I so lovingly suffered to make and replaced it with one of those ugly breathable bumper pads. It looks terrible. But at least she won’t suffocate.
So that’s that. Questions answered finally. Let’s just put that subject to “bed”.
Onward with… hmmmmmmm… nothing much. I’m back from the sticks. I’m attempting to be super mom and plan my meals for the week. Ha! What a funny concept. I did manage to eek out a week’s menu while Baby Bug climbed up the side of my chair fifty-seven times and tried to climb into my lap. I wish I had a jungle gym made out of soft stairs and cushions. She loves to climb things. But she’s always fallling down and banging herself. The other day she fell on the rung that stretches between the two legs of the bistro table we have in the dinging room and gave herself a nasty nick on the side of her eye. I thought sure she was going to get a black eye. What kind of mom am I that I let my kid get a black eye!
It’s just impossible to let her “explore” and play without letting her tumble now and then. No area is 100% safe. She’s starting to pull herself up on everything, even the walls. My mom has this cool little leap pad table toy that stands about a foot maybe a foot and a half tall. She tries to climb up on top of that. She’s just a little mountain climber!
Well, I’m rambling. It’s 3:30 in the morning and my hot lemon and honey tea (that was supposed to make my sore throat feel better) is cold. I guess I might as well tumble back into bed and attempt to get some sleep. Morning is going to be here way before I want it to.
