Fiberful

I started back up with the cereal again today. Chef picked up some infant oatmeal at the grocery yesterday, so this afternoon I gave it a go while I was home at lunch. I say lunch, but it's really more like 2:30 in the afternoon because Squiggles eats around 11am and again around 3pm. Sometimes I come home for the earlier feeding, sometimes for the later one. Today was the later one. Don't worry, I have a snack at work so I don't starve - we wouldn't want that to happen, would we?

The oatmeal mixes up a little runnier than the rice cereal did. Or maybe I was a little heavy-handed with the breast milk; who knows. It smells different, too. Heartier, I guess. And it's more of a tan color. I was hoping Squiggles wouldn't pick up on the differences.

Guess what? He must not have, because he loved the oatmeal! He kept opening his mouth and looking at me and kicking his little feet. If I waited too long between bites (because I was talking with my mother-in-law while I was feeding him), he would let out with his little howler monkey imitation. He put down almost two tbsp. of the stuff. Woo-hoo!

Today's success gives me hope for the cereal feedings, though I'll reserve final judgment until we find out how this affects his sleep.

On an adult note (but not the x-rated kind!), Chef and I are going out with my friend Sarah and her husband tonight while they are in town. We're going to try out a new restaurant, The Pub, that we heard about last year while we were at the Dayton Ale Fest (we got to talk with the owner). I'm excited to see Sarah and have some grownup conversation and (hopefully) yummy food. And beer.

Good aim!

I have an announcement to make: I am wearing prepregnancy pants today! In fact, this is the first time that I've worn pregpregnancy pants since, well, since they were simply known as pants.

This whole recovering from having a baby thing is taking time, that's for sure; but here it is, not quite six months since Squiggles joined us, and I'm back into some pre-baby clothes. I'd say I'm back down to my fighting weight, but I'm actually below my prepregnancy weight. It's just that my weight has been redistributed. Or redirected. To my midsection. No matter - this is a banner day! Now I can start focusing on losing the weight that I wanted to lose before I got pregnant. I must say, carrying around an infant creeping up on 20 lbs. and nursing helps tremendously.

Sigh. But it's not so much about me anymore, is it? Well, I suppose I can share something about the boy.

One of the most surprising things about having a baby boy is the propensity they have to pee. On everything. Mind you, I didn't have a lot of experience with babies, let alone baby boys, before Squiggles came along, so I wasn't exactly prepared for much at all. Especially this peeing thing. I can now see the need for a Peepee Teepee. Actually, we just used a baby washcloth, but isn't that the best product name? And look, they have Santa hat ones for Christmas!


Anyway, I sure could have used these little things this afternoon. I went home for lunch for both me and the boy, and to spend some time with Chef (who came home early from his business trip - yay!). I was changing a post-feeding diaper, but was having trouble getting Squiggles to keep his hands off his crotch. This is his newest discovery - he loves grabbing himself. I'm not sure why. But it's odd and funny at the same time. Even with a diaper on, he grabs and it makes this scratching sound on the diaper.

So he's trying to grab himself and I'm trying to clean the poo off of him and he ends up getting it on his hands and now I'm trying to keep his hands out of the poo and out of his face and he thinks it's a fun game. Then he pees. A long, arcing stream of pee. Right into the little bucket on the changing table that holds his diaper cream and brush and other such things. At least he has good aim.

I guess we'd gotten lax about using the washcloth in the last couple of months because Squiggles seemed to have outgrown the issue, but maybe we need to start up again. Or maybe not. He'd probably just grab the washcloth and start chewing on it.

Not Quite Ready

Welcome to NaBloPoMo day, um, 2? Day 6? Curses for not starting on Nov. 1!

Here's an update on the cereal experience: it's on hold for the time being. Yes, that's right, I haven't fed Squiggles his rice cereal now for about a week. Why? Well, it certainly isn't because he wasn't getting used to it.


Not only was he getting used to eating cereal, it seemed he was even enjoying it. I had decreased the amount of milk so that it was less of a liquid consistency. We even made it up to 1 1/2 tbsp of cereal mixed with the same amount of milk, and he was eating almost all of that.

What made me stop feeding him the cereal was how it was affecting his sleeping pattern. Isn't starting babies on solid food supposed to help sleep through the night better? Well, not us. Squiggles had been sleeping just fine through the night, but after a few days of cereal feedings, he started waking up during the night. More than once per night. And it was getting harder and harder to put him down at night. We'd get him to sleep, and, as soon as we'd lower him into his crib, he'd wake up. And scream. It was not fun. Chef and I were at a loss as to what to do, so I suggested we stop feeding Squiggles the cereal. That was the only explanation; we hadn't started him on any other new routines lately.

Squiggles is sleeping just fine through the night now. The first couple of nights, we had a hard time getting him to go down - he'd wake up about an hour or so after we put him down - but now he's back to sleeping around 9 hours through the night. I'm not sure what really happened; maybe he was getting too much gas because of the cereal? Rice is supposed to be very gentle and benign for baby digestive systems. I shared this experience with a friend of mine who said that her daughter had problems with rice cereal, too, and that they had better success with oatmeal because of the higher fiber content.

So I will get Squiggles some oatmeal and we will try again. Maybe I'll even try a different time of day - late morning or early afternoon as opposed to the evening. But I'm in no hurry. He's gaining weight (18.5 lbs!) and sleeping through the night and isn't even six months old yet, so I don't see any need to rush this whole transition to solids. Plus there's that tiny part of me that doesn't want to him to grow up.

Starting...NOW!

So I've signed up for NaBloPoMo. Well, technically I signed up on Friday and promptly forgot to make any blog posts all weekend long. Please don't hate me, NaBloPoMo!

This will certainly be a challenge for me. I mean, I haven't made more than 5 entries on this entire blog since I started the dang thing, let alone post every single day. It's hard to motivate yourself to update something that only a few people read. So, I've decided to change my attitude about blogging. Did I start this blog to gain hordes of internet followers? No, I did not. I started this blog so I could have a place to talk about Squiggles and document these precious days. I'm horrible at scrapbooking, babybooking, really any "booking" for that matter. But I love the internet. I'm always on the internet. So I will use it to keep a record of my wonderful baby boy.

And I resolve to post every day. Maybe I'll even include a picture. That should get my mom and sister checking in.

First Bites

Yesterday, we decided to feed Squiggles his first bites of cereal. Why? Well, he hasn't been napping very well for the past few days, and there have been a few instances where he'll still want to nurse after a feeding but doesn't really eat anything - he just kind of hangs out there. Granted, these things may all be attributed to teething (we saw white gums on top yesterday!), but we decided to try cereal and see if that either helps him or shocks him into napping and eating better.

So after lunch, my MIL and I went to Target to get the "supplies" while Chef and my FIL picked up our new La-Z-Boy chair (muy comfortable!). First, I picked up a big, honkin' box of Gerber rice cereal. I say honkin', but I think it's really only 16oz. That's still a lot of rice cereal, especially considering that we'll only mix up a tbsp or so at a time for the little guy. Still, I had a coupon for $2 off a $2 Gerber baby food purchase and the 8oz box wasn't quite $2 and I'm proving that I'm frugal.



While I'm on the cereal subject, Target had a sign on the shelf stating that the Gerber Organic cereals had been recalled due to "potential choking risk". I'm not sure how one could choke on extremely runny cereal, but it seems some of the cereal clumps do not fully dissolve in liquid, thus causing the choking risk. Be aware, be safe!

The next feeding must-have were some spoons. Squiggles' Great Aunt B gave him a beautiful sterling silver loop handle spoon, but I think I'll let him play with it once we get the hang of this whole feeding thing a little more. I ended up getting a package of Gerber infant spoons. Long, slim handle; small, flat spoon covered in different colors of silicone. Very nice.



So, the big moment. We made sure to have the camcorder set up so we could capture this moment for posterity. I ceremoniously measured out one tbsp of cereal into a small stoneware ramekin. I carefully poured in a few tbsp of warmed breast milk (I thought of using milk straight from the tap, if you know what I mean, but the image of me hovering over and aiming into the ramekin made me giggle too much - and, yes, I realize that wouldn't be the best way of doing that). I lovingly stirred the concoction. With camera running, we cooed and encouraged and told Squiggles what a big boy he was. And then came the first bite. He accepted the bit of cereal on the tip of his special spoon and promptly looked over at Chef as if to say, "You're letting her DO this to me?" Or, as my MIL said this morning, "Come on, you're a chef, can't you make this taste any better?" So hilarious! We tried a few more bites, but eventually, Squiggles' disgust moved from his face to his hand, and he began to bat at the spoon every time I brought it near his mouth. All of this was followed by a hearty nursing session.

We will be trying again this evening, of course, because we know it will take some time for him to get used to this. I will try to post a snippet of the video from last night and/or a picture from tonight's trial.