amen!

Make the Ordinary Come Alive

 

Do not ask your children

to strive for extraordinary lives.

Such striving may seem admirable,

but it is a way of foolishness.

Help them instead to find the wonder

and the marvel of an ordinary life.

Show them the joy of tasting

tomatoes, apples, and pears.

Show them how to cry

when pets and people die.

Show them the infinite pleasure

in the touch of a hand.

And make the ordinary come alive for them.

The extraordinary will take care of itself.

- William Martin

 

via - Girls Gone Child

 

italian baby food

So I have said before that Olive is a rather tight lipped baby when we put a spoon near her face. Then I made a classic italian baby food as suggested by Luisa at The Wednesday Chef.

Here is her recipe:

Pastina
Serves 1 baby
2-3 tablespoons small soup pasta
4 grape or cherry tomatoes, quartered
Olive oil
Grated Parmesan cheese
1. In a small saucepan, bring an inch of water to the boil with a small pinch of salt. When the water is boiling, add the soup pasta and the quartered tomatoes and cook until the pasta is done.
2. Spoon the pasta, tomatoes and a little bit of the cooking liquid into a serving bowl. Drizzle with a little olive oil and top with a little grated cheese. Serve.
Variation with 1 very fresh egg:
When the pasta is finished cooking, turn off the heat under the pot and crack the egg into the pasta. Stir the egg until it is cooked and transformed into custardy shreds. Pour the contents of the pot into a serving bowl, top with olive oil and cheese and serve.
Nota bene: Make sure to really only use the amount of water that you want to serve, if using the egg. Once the egg is stirred into the pot, you can't reduce the amount of liquid in the pot.

I skipped the tomatoes and cheese but added the egg. Olive opened her mouth repeatedly for more! The best feeling, you do have a primal urge to feed that baby. Just as I thought she would never be spoon fed, Olive went and ate a meal! Simple things. I'm still doing loads of finger food but I always offer something else too. This recipe is a keeper or maybe our dinner puréed to a thick mash, or try my luck withv a pre prepped jar. 

As a side note Olive and Ada are such wee opposites, in the tastes department Ada loved pumpkin, Olive loves egg and each hates the other. But we all love broccoli. 

Any must share recipes or thoughts on solids out there? We are having no joy at breakfast time. 

I end up eating her toast. Trying to give back the crust. Not so much.

Ada loved food, see baby dahl, irish mash and best (guilt free) pancakes ever, I no longer think these are embarrassingly easy. If you make food for your baby, you are hard core! Go us, when we do it! Haha.

dairy free but not for me

I am a natural born skeptic. I had my suspicions raised about Olive being sensitive to milk when I saw someone post something about evil dairy on Facebook, that was the seed planted in my mind. I assumed it could be any number of things that caused her to be spilly and hard to settle. I am not quick to diet, I love food and so I waited until I had loads of evidence before I cut out dairy. I wasn't sure how much my diet affected my breast milk, some people will find that a no brainer and I know people cut out a lot of things for their babies sake. Allergies and intolerance's have tricky science and I wanted proof. When Olive developed exema and it got worse and worse even after cutting out harsh soaps and detergents I had more suspicions. At first you assume her drool is what is causing the rash on her chin but eventually she was covered in splotches due to dry skin and all her creases, her wrists, behind her knees etc, were red and cracking. The last straw was when Olive got a rash on her face one night when given some formula, within seconds the milk that had been on her face left a bright red mark that lasted for over an hour.

Henceforth, I decided to eliminate dairy to see if it would help. I removed yogurt, milk, ice cream and cheese (sob) from my diet but I haven't worried about dairy as an ingredient in baking or similar scenarios. Even when doing this slowly, I had a little cheese one day, a flat white another, but getting stricter over the course of a week Olive's skin cleared up on her tummy and back in only four days. It is a sacrifice, but once I saw it made a difference I was more than happy to do it. I don't mind a soy flat white bit I mostly drink straight espresso at home. I missed yogurt on my breakfast a lot at first but not any more. Cheese, a fried egg and relish on vogels was a go to lunch and I do miss that. Lately I have snuck a little dairy in (aforementioned go to lunch...), sometimes I plain forget and eat a piece of pizza while out. Oh pizza, you delicious trickster.

Olive loves cheese and things with cheese in them, a bread stick that I looked at more closely was her first taste and I have given her a small square of cheese to observe what happens, nothing, a good sign? However, when she swipes one of Ada's cornflakes from her highchair she gets marks on her chin immediately. Could this indicate a lactose intolerance rather than dairy allergy? At least we are not worried about an anaphalactic reaction! We are not sure what the plan is from here but feel we have things under control for now. Has anyone else dealt with a dairy sensitivity? Other advice from the floor?

waffle mania

good things

The girls are both asleep, I made dinner for tonight yesterday and it's sunny out. 3 good things. 

I wanted to share my own little miss james dean. So tired after this mornings shenanigans, wee poppet. 

Cloth nappy booty. 

fun for free: Monte Cecelia Park

Our most recent Auckland discovery is Monte Cecelia Park off Hillsborough Road. It is a lush green, rolling hills sort of place where people picnic and walk dogs. At the top of the park is the historic and very lovely Pah homestead which houses the Wallace Arts Centre, a gift shop and a cafe. Did somebody say coffee? We all loved walking/crawling around the galleries filled with sculptures and paintings. Ada showed us her favorite piece in each room and tried out all the leather couches and seats that I wanted to take home, along with some Ian Scott pieces. Outside there is a huge sweeping veranda to enjoy some coffee and cake and lots of outdoor sculptures to explore. There is even one friendly cat to amuse the small ones. I want to go back soon! 

So much crawling to do, so little time

waking up singing

Oh hello!

This little lady has been under the weather. Home bound for 10 days under the weather. Horrible high temps overnight (and all day mind you) under the weather. 

She is feeling better. Feeling like herself. She woke up singing this morning. That feels like sweet relief to this mama. 

baby led weaning update

Olive doesn't want to be be spoon fed by us, she clamps her mouth shut and turns away. We can even put food on a spoon and she will put it in her mouth, pretty successfully I may say. She has an independent streak a mile wide this one. So I have been reading a bit about baby led weaning (pretty sue I am repeating myself, ah well). Baby led weaning seems to be about the baby being in control of what goes in their mouth, the name gives some of that away, no? The goal is for them to get used to different tastes and textures while their nutrition is still coming from breast milk or formula.

Olive loves to munch on:

• Broccoli, steamed or stir fried but really soft so the floret kind of disintegates in her mouth
• Chick peas. Yep whole. I'm not freaked about the choking thing it seems. Olive has never gagged on these, I squish them slightly so they are slightly easier to grip and slightly easier to munch.
• Peach.
• Pasta, in particular, fettuccine, So little was eaten but the tomato and vege sauce went down a treat!
• Oven fries (I added some paprika to keep them tasty). She eats the potato and spits out the skin, or you could cut off the skin once cooked.
• Carrots and lamb removed from a slow cooker meal. She chews on a big piece of meat then discards it once it is grey.
• Peas, I serve them frozen, Ada loved them like this too, those little fingers working out what they can grasp. Olive only manages to consume about four in a sitting so I am not worried about her digesting the uncooked fibre.

One idea I read about that I haven't tried yet is to peel and chop into spears apples, pears, kumara, potato, carrots and bake at about 200ºC until soft inside, maybe 30 minutes, sprinkling each with something complementary. Cinnamon on the fruit, cumin on the carrots, paprika, mild curry powder even on the root vegetables. Olive being fussier than Ada has meant discovering that interesting flavours will entice her to eat more!

I do keep trying with different foods though and strangely enough as I go to post this we have discovered something Olive does want to be spoon fed. So, swings and roundabouts folks, that's the name of the baby game huh, all that change keeps us on our toes! So I'll post a recipe for that too...

 We miss watermelon...

8 months!

Miss Olive keeps getting bigger! 8 months on the clock now! 

We have been heads down bums up (literally for Ada) with a rough virus/infection combo. So this post is a tad late.

Olive loves to have crawling races, bath time, eat noodles, giggle with her sister, say bap bap bap, reach for forbidden items. There are thankfully no signs Olive is about to take off walking, but she is balancing on her own two feet from time to time. She is a barrel of laughs our Olive and we love her so!

seven months
six months
five months
Four months.
Three months.
Two months.
One month.
Ada at 8 months.

chatterbox

Ada chirps away all day long. She has a pretty posi take on things and does a lot of nodding with imploring eyes when she is asking for something or even just telling me what is happening, I love this. Life with Ada at the moment is a combination of running commentary ("my drinking a drink bottle"), mimicry ("oooh, it lovely") and  a game of Whose Line is it Anyway? (see below) thrown in. We have taught her the all important kiwi up swing at the end of sentences, we hear a lot of, "yeah?" Or "no?" Or sometimes together like this, "No. - (wait for it) - yeah, yeah!" 'Yeah but nah but' can't be too far off. I love the my instead of I. I correct her maybe once a day and it is slowly disappearing, but no rush, the English language is a fickle changeable master, she will get it soon enough.
Quotable of late:

While playing house, "No Mama, go away!" With a stop sign hand to prove her point.

The other day with gumboots on her hands, "My is a hedgehog. With long arms. My go roar." We don't cover hedgehogs too often.

When wearing my shoes. "My is a dinosaur." I guess the clompy walking is dinosaurish?

Anytime the feeling is right: "my so happy!" I love this. A lot.

We get a lot of "no photo's" at the moment. I need to be sneakier for sure.

When a character looks sad: "he wants Mama." Awwwww, so sweet! 

"My do it myself!"