eat

Helping Hand

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Claire offered to feed Molly her solids this morning. Claire did not want to simply “help” feed Molly. She wanted to just do it herself. Claire has been on a real helping kick lately, wanting to help fix dinner, wanting our help to clean up her room, etc. Claire had been pretty good with some limited Molly feeding in the past, and frankly I could use an extra hand with things, so I decided to turn Claire loose to feed Molly. She poured Molly’s pureed carrots into a little bowl, got a baby spoon, a set up shop in front of Molly, who I had already sat down in her feeding chair wearing a bid.
It went really well. Claire did a careful and thorough job feeding Molly, even cleaning up the food mess as she went, and Molly got lots of carrots. See for yourself. (The sound seems to be missing for some reason. I think my camera phone is messed up. It’s not big deal, though, since everyone was mostly quiet anyways.)

http://www.youtube.com/get_player

Twelve-Pound Bunny Rabbit

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Since her first crack at solid foods, Molly has been finding rice cereal a little dull. She mostly just plays with it, and is has not been very interested in consuming lots of it. Our pediatrician had recommended moving Molly on to vegetables pretty quick after dipping her proverbial toes in the pool with rice cereal, so we decided to go with carrots as her second food.

Kit’s parents were in town, and the weather was finally sunny and spring-like, so we went out for lunch at Freddie’s, which features outdoor dining and a playground. It was at Freddie’s that Molly tried her first carrots. She gobbled them right up and really seemed to enjoy them. She even cried in protest when the next spoonful was not quick enough in coming. I doubt Molly would have even touched boring ol’ rice cereal at Freddie’s, with all of its distractions, but these carrots sure did the trick.


Solid Showing

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Today, we gave Molly her first crack at “solid” food. By solid, I mean a mushy mass of rice cereal and formula that would make oatmeal look like a cake. Still, it was a big step. Molly had recently taken special interest in the stuff we are always putting into our mouths and not taking back out, aka food. It must almost seem like a magic trick to her.

This was a whole-family event. Claire was super excited about Molly trying solids. She understandably thought that rice cereal was some sort of breakfast cereal and suggested that she and Molly have it in the morning. At her request, we did make some rice cereal for Claire to try it out and help encourage Molly. Claire was not impressed but did eat some just out of pure enthusiasm. She made a point of showing Molly how to do it, eating it with big sweeping motions. Kit then gave Molly a spoonful of the mush, and Molly took a bite. She seemed surprised but excited by it. Of course, she ended up pushing most of the mush out with her tongue, but it was a good start. We kept this up for another few minutes, and Molly ended up doing a little better keeping the food down. She really had fun with it and seemed to think the whole thing was sort of a game. Also, she seemed to feel important and grown-up sitting up in the new Bumbo seat that Kit had picked up just that day just for this occasion.

For the record, while Molly enjoyed her rice cereal, the rest of the family dined on
enchilada casserole, thanks to the Soup Peddler. Claire was not excited about the food and tried to help out by putting it back in the kitchen before even taking a solitary bite. We convinced her to try three bites, and which point she realized it was pretty good and went ahead and ate the whole thing.

Stomach Virus Redux

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The terrible stomach virus is back!

A day after an apparent full recovery, Claire work up once again vomiting. Around 9:30 at night, we heard Claire suddenly crying from her bedroom. When we ran in, she and her bed were covered with vomit. Kit and I went into wordless motion to get everything cleaned and get Claire some new clean sheets. We had the sheets clothes in the laundry and new spare sheets on the bed in no time. Kit slept in Claire’s for a while to help her relax.

This may have simply been Claire’s stomach having trouble adjusting to eating again. Until today, she had mostly been eating very little, and only bland things like plain tortillas. Today I sent her a mostly regular school lunch, including some lil’ smokies, thinking (perhaps wrongly) that her stomach would tell her whether she should eat it. Maybe it did not agree with her after all!


Putting It Away

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Claire does not always want to eat.  Usualy she wants to do something else, namely play.  But when she sets her mind to it, she can really put it away.

We went to EZ’s for lunch the other day, and Claire picked the kid’s hamburger meal somewhat surprisingly over chicken tenders and pizza.  I am not sure what was “kid’s” about the burger.  It was a full sized grown-up burger, even a pretty big one.  I was expecting Claire to nibble around the edges and then play with her favorite new little baby doll from Book People.  Kit and I got to talking and tending to Molly, who was crying in her portable car seat.  Then I looked over and saw Claire eating the last bit of her burger.  Wow, that thing was almost as big as her head, and now it was in her stomach.  I even checked the floor — no burger.

As a matter of contrast, we had burgers again tonight (we are making a point of eating real healthy right now 😉 ), and Claire literally did not touch it.  She ate grapes, a pear, an apple, and some cheddar goldfish crackers.  Maybe I gawked at her too much back at EZ’s when I saw her hamburger disappear.

Double Pumping

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Kit is still pumping to feed Molly. I hope Kit will forgive me if this is too personal, but Kit has taken untold steps to feed Molly breast milk over the last couple of months, and I wanted to recognize her heroic effort.

Due to her long hours on the job and Molly’s physiology, Kit has not been able to simply nurse Molly. It sounds like such a simple idea to breast feed, but several weeks of serious frustration, worrying, and discomfort on Kit and Molly’s part showed how difficult it can really be. Molly was not gaining enough weight and simply had to have some formula, but Kit was still spurred on to feed Molly as much breast milk as possible.


It may be a surprise to the uninitiated, but this whole breastfeeding topic is so full of controversy that it makes Republicans and Democrats look tame. Kit is no “breastfeeding nazi” by any means. In fact, she is often put off by the guilt-tripping attitude of the breastfeeding crowd. But this fall’s seasonal flu and N1H1 outbreaks, which can be deadly to infants, inspired Kit to get Molly her breast milk. Kit was dismayed by the exaggerated claims of the breastfeeding crowd, so as a scientist herself, she did a literature search on the topic. She saw nothing compelling about breast milk helping with intelligence or obesity, but she did find a credible scientific article suggesting that breast milk might objectively might help fight off sickness to some extent. The amount of help is not fully understood, and of course nothing is guaranteed, but just that glimmer of hope was enough for Kit find another way to get Molly her breast milk.

What resulted was pumping — lots and lots of pumping. Kit has never really complained about it, but her pumping regimen has been a tough haul. Kit is often up at 5:00 am, sometimes earlier, to pump before work. And then she comes home at 6:30 and heads straight up to pump. Dinner time usually involves Claire and I eating dinner together while Kit is off performing the grotesque ritual of pumping, and Molly (the sleepyhead) is napping. Kit shows up some 30-45 minutes later with a few ounces of breast milk in two plastic bottles, and then we warm up her stale dinner while I got Claire ready for bed. The whole thing was pretty disruptive to our whole family routine, especially for Kit. Early on, when Kit was still on maternity leave, she was actually pumping about 10 times a day, and each session took around 30-45 minutes. And then there is the cleaning, the endless cleaning. There are eight pieces that need to be hand cleaned and steam sterilized in the microwave each time Kit pumps, each piece having odd corners, flaps, and hard to reach areas. Admittedly, this one affects me the most, so I had to get it in here.

Through all of this, Kit must feel like a cow, a very sore cow. And she is a cow (I mean a mom) who has gone to great lengths for her calf (I mean baby) just in case it helps. The good news is that something is working because Molly has not gotten a common cold yet, much less the flu, even after weeks of day care. The breast milk may have had something to do with that. I would also give credit to hand washing. Thankfully, Molly’s school is full of hand washing nazis.

290 Express

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Taking advantage of our new closer proximity to Houston, Claire and I made a quick road trip to see my parents this weekend. We left Kit back in Austin for some seriously overdue R&R. Kit was reluctant to let us go and wanted to talk on the phone a couple of times each day. She was usually waking up or falling asleep from a nap whenever we talked to her, so apparently the forced respite was a good idea.

Claire and I got to Houston in no time. We entertained ourselves in the car by listening to audio books, namely The Cat in the Hat and How the Grinch Stole Christmas, selections inspired by her recent fascination with another Dr. Seuss story. On the way back, Claire fell asleep for about half the trip and estimated that the whole trip took about 10 minutes.

We had some good adventures during our one-night visit to Houston. Claire got to play with my mom, briefly visit Discovery Green downtown, escape a sudden and unexpected rainstorm downtown, go out to eat in soaking wet clothes, consume an entire ear of roasted corn, dry off, go swimming, dry off again, and fall sleep on a giant inflatable bed.

“I want to go back to Houston!” she would say more than a few times after getting home. Yes, Austin has a lot to offer, but two things it will not give you are her grandparents and (at least this summer) a good fun rainstorm.

Quesadilla Crack

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Claire had a quesadilla, her perennial favorite, for dinner tonight. She did not finish eating the whole thing, so I started to pack up the leftovers to put them away in the fridge. Claire waved at the quesadilla and said with a smile, “Bye bye, quesadilla! I’ll eat you later!”

“Slice” of Life

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Here is some footage of a typical dinner with Claire. I got a little bored waiting for Claire to finish eating, and after taking a few photos with my cell phone, I remembered the video recorder. It is fun to have real conversations with Claire nowadays.