Getting the Hang of It

Things flow so much more smoothly and naturally with this second child of ours, just by virtue of us having a much more balanced approach to caring for her.

When Sly was finally four months old, I couldn't *wait* to start him on solid foods.  I thought about it, read about it, planned it out, and talked to every parent I knew about how to do it.  It seemed like such a big deal.  We followed the traditional method: starting with baby rice cereal + breast milk, slowly increasing the proportions of rice for each feeding, introducing one new grain only after a full week has passed (to allow for any allergic reaction), graduating him to "first foods" of jarred pureed veggies, then jarred fruits, etc.

For a $20+  rubber toy, there's no excuse for the fact that my children have been able to suck ALL the spots off Sophie the Giraffe

With Stella, I just sorta shrug and say, "eh - she'll eat solids eventually.  No rush."   I didn't bother to buy any special baby foods for the longest time.  As she's seemed interested, I let her have tastes of whatever I'm eating.  I let her munch on a cracker, gave her a bite of my soup or applesauce or mashed potatoes, or use the food mill to grind down whatever veggies we're eating at dinner.  It's just a lot nicer to not make a huge fuss about it.  I don't think what we're doing is exactly "child-led weaning", but it follows that philosophy much more than the way we did it with Sly.

And as I gain confidence in the way I'm caring for this little girl, the less I think or worry about stuff like that - what specific parenting philosophy or method we may or may not be following [and there are lots of them!  I'm constantly explaining to Tom the meaning of concepts like "child-led weaning", "attachment parenting", "elimination communication", "co-sleeping", "cry-it-out", etc.].  I can just go with what makes sense at the time.

Sleeping anywhere, through anything - alright, second child!

Now, instead of letting my schedule revolve around the baby, Stella has adjusted to fit into the family's schedule.  It's so nice.  My experiences with Sly (my poor little first-born "guinea pig") have helped me to hone my mothering instincts, and now things just come so much more naturally.  Everything's not such a huge deal.

I feel a little bad, because we have a baby calendar for Stella, as we did for Sly.  But I keep forgetting to take note of the exact day she does new things - when she first laughed, rolled over, etc. There are going to be a LOT of the milestone stickers left unused at the end of the year!

We still love you, Stella Bella!

Happy Easter! He is Risen!

It's been awhile since I've written. Holy week and Easter are such busy times, and the past few days have provided me with many little chores and tasks needing to be taken care of. Also, I felt like I had an overwhelming amount of things that I could write an entry about, so I took the noncommittal route, and chose to write nothing!

In an attempt to keep things short and sweet, I'll just post a few pictures from the past week, and speak about them as the inspiration strikes...

I hung up some of the lovely roses Tom gave me. This picture was taken over the weekend, so by now, they're mostly dried. We keep small vases of dried roses on our home altar, and I also have a large vase of them decorating our mantle. I'm not sure yet what the fate of these ones will be...we'll have to see how they turn out, color-wise. But I admit, I kind of like the rustic charm they add to the kitchen just when they're hanging there from the ceiling. I mentioned to Tom that it might be nice someday to decorate with bunches of dried flowers in this way, and he surprisingly agreed completely.


We spent Holy Saturday fixing up our garden and getting stuff planted. I finally got to get those tomato seedlings out of the kitchen! (The front planter has my lavender seeds, which seem to have just been complete duds, all of them).


The quality of this picture is pretty poor (it was taken from Sly's bedroom window), but this is a view of our backyard. The two garden patches in the back now have: tomatoes, carrots, Romaine lettuce, and sugar snap peas. We also planted morning glories along the side fence this summer, so they won't completely engulf all the crops again.


Sly really enjoyed picking the dandelions in the grass (which needs to be cut badly! I should call the landlord about that...)


I snatched it out of his mouth right away (well, after getting this picture of course :-P)

Saturday evening, we dyed our eggs. I also dipped twelve blown eggs into the dyes, to be decorated with wax at a later time. Notice how I have Sly AND Lance in my lap at once. They fight for my attention all the time.

I made a "Sly" egg with the handy clear crayon that comes in the dye set, and Tom suggested I make one for each of us as well. But it seemed inappropriate to write "Christine" and "Tom" on them. I mean...in relation to Sly, we are "Mom(my)" and "Dad(dy)." So that's what I wrote. And it did feel strange. I think that's the first time I've ever referred to myself that way in print before.


Our eggs looked much nicer the night we dyed them. This picture was from Sunday morning, after the fridge had already covered them with condensation and made the dye drip.

We went to the Easter Vigil Mass at 10:00. For weeks, I had been insisting that would be a bad idea. Tom really loves the Vigil, and I knew he wanted to go, but I didn't think Sly would feel the same. I kept trying to paint pictures of the awful scenes we could expect to endure, having a cranky baby out well past his bedtime. Somehow, though, in the end, Tom convinced me it would be okay. He assured me that Sly would just sleep through the whole thing.

Hah! I should've listened to my gut! He screamed through the entire first half, and I had to sit with him out in the narthex, missing everything. Well, technically, I could still hear the priest. But it was all in Latin, and we only own one missal that has the updated Easter Vigil Mass in it. So I really couldn't follow what was happening. But Sly finally did sleep, and we were even able to go out for food afterward with friends (I got a milkshake)!

On the way home, we were discussing what Easter traditions we may like to have once Sly gets a little older. In Tom's family, the kids had to find their Easter baskets as well as all their eggs on Easter morning. At my house, we came down to find the baskets on the coffee table, and the eggs in the fridge - just where we'd left them!

That night, Tom was very insistent that I should just go to bed, and he would stay down to clean up and get Sly's Easter basket ready. I should have known...

...that he was actually hiding all my wax eggs around the house for me to find in the morning! I spotted this one first, hidden in the coupon holder thingy.

Sly wore an adorable too-big Easter suit. This only lasted about half an hour, until we decided to change him into something we didn't mind getting dirty.

As soon as I saw he was getting green dye on his mouth, I took the egg away.

We read that babies can eat egg yolks, but not the whites, since they have a lot of allergens in them. "This will be perfect," I thought, "since I only like to eat the whites!" But no such luck. He did not enjoy egg yolks one bit, and started crying each time we tried to give him a second bite!


He got some Cheerios instead. Sly always reaches into the pocket on his bib to get the food he dropped. I think it's adorable - like he's digging for treasure.


The Easter Bunny brought him a basket filled with....plastic eggs to play with! No candy for babies!

After spending the morning around the house, getting our fill of chocolate and hard-boiled eggs, we headed over to my dad's house, where he was hosting the entire extended family for dinner.

For a while, Sly was the only baby there, so he was getting passed all around. At some point near the end of the night, someone must have given him a pretzel rod. He LOVED it and was munching away on it for a happy half hour, and getting himself covered with little bits of pretzel-turned-slime. Next time he was handed back to me, I saw that someone had given him a second pretzel, which he was clutching in the other hand. So for over an hour, he went back and forth, sucking on the two pretzels. Since it was well past his bedtime, he was amazingly cranky, and cried everytime we tried to take one away or clean him up.

Overall, a nice Easter spent with family and gorgeous weather!


And one last picture:


Sly's really starting to love solid foods. Monday night, I sat near the sink so I could clean him up, and he grabbed a slice of leftover pizza off my plate on the counter!

Latest Projects

1. This past Sunday was Passion Sunday, at least according to the old liturgical calendar. Since we attend the Latin Mass each week, that tends to be the calendar we observe. During Passiontide, some churches still maintain the practice of covering the crucifixes and statues with purple cloth.

For a couple years now, Tom has longed to do this at home too. Last year, we didn't think of it until it was almost too late - a few days before Easter. We purchased three yards of cloth, but never got around to doing anything with it. But last Saturday night, we amazingly remembered that the next day was Passion Sunday, and that we should dig out the cloth. Actually...by the time we had actually found the cloth, it was well past midnight. I decided to go to bed, and leave the statue-veiling to my wonderful husband. When I woke up in the morning, I thought it was kinda cute that he had covered every last statue in the house - including the tiny little St. Therese and St. Thomas Aquinas statues on the bookshelves. It's funny - there are just these two small purple bulges sitting there now.

For an idea of what the house looks like now,

On the mantle

Our home altar

On the way to Sunday Mass, we started asking ourselves why it is that Catholics cover statues at the end of Lent like this. We both liked the practice, but realized that we didn't have a good explanation for it. But this is one thing I love about our Catholic faith. Even when you don't fully understand the "why" of something - if it is Church teaching, you KNOW that it is true and good. So we were happy to observe the tradition, and learn the reasoning after the fact.

A little research turns up a satisfying explanation. According to Fisheaters:

Today, statues and sacred images (except for the Stations of the Cross) are veiled with purple cloth beginning at the Vespers of Passion Sunday, and they remain covered until the Gloria of Holy Saturday, at which point Lent ends and Eastertide begins. Catholics cover statues and icons, etc., in their homes for the same time period (the cloth shouldn't be transluscent or decorated in any way).

This veiling of the statues and icons stems from the Gospel reading of Passion Sunday (John 8:46-59), at the end of which the Jews take up stones to cast at Jesus, Who hides Himself away. The veiling also symbolizes the fact that Christ's Divinity was hidden at the time of His Passion and death, the very essence of Passiontide.

At the Vespers Mass on Holy Saturday, Lent ends and Easter begins: the statues are unveiled at that time in one of the most glorious liturgical moments of the entire Church year, a moment that affirms His divinity and proclaims that "He is risen!"

And here's more explanation at Father Z.'s blog.

2. A couple weeks ago, while waiting for one of my tutoring students to arrive at the library, I was browsing in the craft book section. I really enjoy doing crafty things, but I suffer from a severe lack of creativity. I need to have directions to follow or a friend showing me exactly what to do in order for me to produce something nice. I thought it would be fun to find an idea for a new project to start. I found a great book titled, appropriately, The Great Book of Egg Decorating. It was a fortuitous find, since I'd been saying to Tom only a week earlier that I would like to decorate blown eggs (which is when you literally blow the insides out a hole on the other end of the egg, allowing the shell to be decorated and last forever), as I used to do when I was a kid. The book does teach you the basics of how to do the ever-popular and ever-impressive Ukrainian-style eggs. But for the most part, it focuses on some different styles of decorating, using different tools.

Most of the decorations shown in the book are drawn onto the eggs with wax. They suggested that you construct a special wax-melting device. Knowing that Tom loves little projects like that (and wanting to try out some designs!), I asked him to make me one. He did a great job, and even added a little feature that will make the height of the "pot" adjustable.


When the wax is melted, you dip a pin head into it (which is inserted into a dowel rod or pencil, for ease of use), and "write" your designs onto the eggs. I imagine it's a lot like using a quill and an ink well. Pure beeswax makes the base, and then you can add things to color it.


I purchased candle dye in red, which I used on the wax of my first four attempts (the eggs shown in the back of the picture, below). But then I discovered that you can dye the wax for much cheaper but just as effectively with a chunk of Crayola crayon (used for the pink designs on the two front eggs).


So far, I've only been experimenting on undyed egg shells. Mostly, I just wanted to get the hang of using the tools. My first couple eggs were pretty sloppy, but I'm getting better. When we dye Easter eggs next week, I want to have a little stock of pre-blown eggs that I can dunk into the dyes.

They also show how you can drill "decorative" holes into the eggs with a tiny drill bit (which Tom already eagerly went out and purchased for me!), and can even lace little ribbons through the holes for a pretty effect. I'm looking forward to trying that out soon.

I will post more pictures as I create them!

3. Okay, this one is a really lame "project" to even mention, but...Today, my purse died, but I brought it back to life!

I'm not one of those gals who likes to own several purses at a time, and switch them out with her outfit, or with the season. I am a one-purse woman. And that one purse needs to have certain very exact features (such as a long strap so it can drape across my front from shoulder to opposite hip, and the right number of zipping or snapping compartments for my phone, camera, etc.). And while I only use one purse, I JAM that thing full of every item I might possibly want anytime I'm out of the house!

It takes me a lot of searching to find a worthy purse each time I need to replace one (which is only every three years or so). So I get worried when my purse is starting to get shabby, as mine has been doing lately. Today, while I was out, the strap completely broke off. But I managed to sew it back on, and I think it should hold for a little while more!


Though I think it's time to start shopping for a new one...

4. Sly got his first tooth a few days ago! And coincidentally, I had just decided to start trying out some new foods on him, and helping him learn to feed himself. The pureed baby foods are fine, but, let's be honest, it's inconvenient to always have to be spooning each bite into his mouth. I wanted to start trying him on foods that could be made into small baby-size pieces that he could grab in his hands.

For the past few days, he's been happily enjoying various breads, Graham crackers, Cheerios, small pieces of grapes, and banana chunks out of his own little hands. It's a lot of fun to introduce new things to him, and I'm definitely open to suggestions for some other baby-friendly foods, if anyone's got them.

Last night, he even got to enjoy some of the same dinner as Tom and I were eating - stuffing and cranberry sauce (I was in the mood for Thanksgiving foods last night, so I cooked up a pseudo-Thanksgiving dinner!)

Enjoying some of Tom's omelette from brunch on Sunday

But it certainly leaves a mess. I now have to scrub down his hands, his face, the entire high chair, and a 4-foot diameter of kitchen floor every time he finishes a meal! But it's great that we can eat our meals at the same time now. During breakfast and dinner for the past few days, I've been able to sit at the table with my food, while Sly sits with me in his high chair, and figures out how to feed himself.

5. My 40 Bags in 40 Days efforts were resumed again last night. I went through almost all my cds, put the discs and booklets into binders, and threw away the cases!

New Foods

Trying mashed peas (mixed with baby oatmeal) for the first time. I think about 95% of it ended up somewhere outside of his mouth.

New Things

1. Sly has started on solid foods. He's only 4 and a half months, but he seemed ready for it. There are certain things you're supposed to look for. One is that the baby is showing curiosity about food. And recently, he's definitely been watching very closely every time I'm eating, following the food with his eyes as it travels to my mouth. He's just about doubled his birth weight, which is another thing. Also, he's been much hungrier lately, and I feel as if my milk supply isn't able to keep up with his appetite!

The World Health Organization as well as The American Academy of Pediatrics recommend breastfeeding exclusively the first six months. But, both say, if you are going to start solids earlier, wait at least four months. Well, we thought it was a good time to start him now, and I don't regret the decision. We feed him a small bowl of baby cereal once a day, and he gobbles it down.

I don't have any pictures of him eating (which surprises me, actually. My first child, and I didn't feel the need to document that huge milestone?!), but here's the little high chair we rigged up to make it easier to feed him. He's nowhere near big enough for it yet. So we replaced the wooden board meant to serve as the seat with the one that's meant to serve as the footrest. And we put in a Bumbo seat, since he still can't sit on his own.

We committed so many safety "no-nos" to achieve this, so I'm not even going to mention them.

One drawback to adding solids to his diet: it is making him poop up a storm! I think that's normal...? Because his digestive system is still getting used to the new type of food. But we're going from one dirty diaper every 2-3 days to 4 dirty diapers a day! Glad we're already going to the cloth diaper store on Saturday, because our meager supply is not lasting as long as I'd like between washes!

2. Last weekend, we took down all our Christmas decorations. Since we were already making a huge mess, and moving furniture around, we decided it would be a good time to play around with how the downstairs rooms are arranged (we have just a tiny living room and huge kitchen. No dining room, unfortunately). Tom and I have both been feeling slightly bummed about having to renew our lease for another whole year. We just don't have the money to move yet. So we wanted to do something to "freshen up" our place for the new year. We tried really hard to reorganize the living room. But the space in there is so tight, that nothing else really worked at all. In the end, we resigned to just leave it (or I should say, "put it back") the way it had been before, with only the slightest change: we oriented the coffee table at a 90° turn from where it had been originally.

Our big change. haha

BUT we made a nice improvement in the kitchen. We switched the table with the microwave cart and rolling cabinet. The space is somehow just so much cozier and easier to use now. We're very happy with how it turned out. (Excuse the darkness of the photos - I foolishly waited until dusk to take them.)

Notice that we use the kitchen to house items such as baby toys and cat scratching posts. I wish we had a bigger house! You can also see here some of the paper snowflakes that are decorating our ceiling for winter.

Having the table nearer to the fridge and oven might provide a handy extra prep surface for cooking/baking.