Making baby food

I've been pretty excited about how making Dash's food is going! (Especially since I hardly ever cook.) We're hardly using the jar stuff that we bought anymore—it's like emergency food now. I've been making big batches of food on the weekend, then freezing it and portioning it out during the week. I made a "chicken casserole" for him yesterday that he loved. I also made a pear and prune puree for his breakfast. There's a sweet potato/broccoli/carrot medley that I'm going to try next and maybe some beef, too.

These are the purees I've made so far:

1. butternut squash and pear (gone)
2. fish and veggies (gone)
3. potatoes and spinach
4. red lentils
5. chicken and veggies
6. pear and prune

Again, with the cuteness

Rosie has been roughhousing with Dash a little more than usual, but it seems to be more about her wanting him to interact with her. Like, he might be playing with a toy by himself and she wants him to play with her, so she'll knock the toy out of his hands and yank him around into the position she wants him to be in. He's usually not too happy about it. She will also playfully knock him on his back and push on him to try to roll him (singing "rolly-poly!"), and I get upset if she's pushing directly on his belly, but that's fairly benign. I'll be keeping my eye out for anything more aggressive.

Many times, though, Rosie will be doing her own thing, walking around, and sweet little Dash will just follow her! She goes into her room, he's crawling along behind her. It's awfully cute. This past weekend, we had to break out the gate for the bottom of the stairs—Rosie taught Dash how to climb! He was as usual following her around and she started up the stairs, saying, "c'mon Dash!" And as we were watching he made it up two steps! Before then, he was only pulling up on the bottom stair. Our little guy is getting into everything—his other favorite thing now is opening and closing doors and cabinets.

Valentine's Day didn't go as expected...

It was Valentine's Day and I took the day off work with reservations at a spa for a full Day Of Beauty. I had the whole day, so I scheduled a massage, a MUCH-needed haircut, manicure, and pedicure at a trendy Mazza Gallery salon I hadn't been to since before Rosie was born. Just as I was leaving the house, trying to figure out the best route to take from Alexandria to Upper NW DC, I got a phone call from daycare that Dash, has blood in his stool. YIKES!?! I cancelled everything, breathlessly sped to him at 80mph. His freaked-out teachers had saved the diaper for me to take to his doctor; it really didn't look like blood to me—it was reddish-purple—but they insisted that I take him.

We get an appointment about 2 hours later (the ped's office was closed for lunch) and I was informed that it was not blood; the purple BM resulted from Omnicef, a strawberry-flavored anibiotic, that he was taking for an ear infection. AAAAAAGGGGGHHHH. I got a note, whisked him back to daycare and wasn't able to salvage the ruin of my day off. I really needed that haircut! But, I was thankful that my son was healthy (clenching teeth).

Standing unsupported

AJS was videotaping Dash while he was crawling on top of him yesterday (his videos are usually very close-up, complete with little hands grabbing at the lens), and told me that Dash let go of him and stood unsupported for about 15 seconds on tape! Of course, when he tried to show me the footage, he couldn't find it, but WOW!!

I haven't seen him standing, but know that Dash has been very busy with pulling up on everything and cruising around the coffee table and the couches. He also pushes a wheeled toy around while walking behind it very well (if it starts to move too fast away from him, he stops and pulls it back in using his arm/upper-body strength). The daycare teachers tell us that he is pushing the cribs around in the nursery along with the big kids.

I got that baby-tether back from Kelly over the weekend. We may need it any day now!

Chinatown Plushies

We saw the Chinese New Year parade this weekend. Rosie was so excited to see the parade that it was all she was talking about all morning. However, the parade designers decided that for this year's parade they would have the entire Chinese Zodiac represented. As soon as those people (plushies?) dressed in full-body animal costumes came close she was screaming to get down off AJS's shoulders and get away from them. AJS was bruised for weeks from the heel-kicks. She was okay with the dragon dance once I explained it to her—when there was a story involved (dragon chasing sun, wants to eat it, drums beating to scare dragon away), she was able to enjoy it. Dashiell just took it all in from his stroller.

Hooray for purees

I've been experimenting with making my own baby food for Dashiell. After a rough start (with lots of gagging and puking), Dashiell has started to enjoy my cooking! His first hated food was my sweet potatoes, then the awful avocado, then the too-thick fish-veggie combo. He enjoyed the butternut squash/peach combo from the start (thank goodness, because I made A LOT!). And he really likes any kind of fruit, especially applesauce, banana, mango or pear. This weekend, I tried another recipe with potatoes and spinach and glory be, he ate it! Last night, I revisited the fish puree and found that it really was too thick so I heated it, added some liquid, then pureed it some more and he finally found it swallowable. Whew. We need to work in some thicker foods but he seems to be showing resistance to textures right now. Hopefully he'll be interested soon enough.

Rosie loves Dash

So far, Rosie has ADORED Dash from when she first saw him in the hospital. It's just the cutest thing ever. She forgives him immediately for yanking her hair and gently chastizes him for playing with her toys (and will hand him one of his toys instead). Her favorite thing to do with him is to "make Dash happy" which is to get in his face and imitate me making goo-goo noises at him. Hilarious to hear my nonsense words coming out in her high-pitched voice! There's been a few times when Rosie was "giving" Dash his toys and being too enthusiastic about it. She'd be throwing them in his direction without looking and winged him in the head. I *know* she was just trying to help, so I tried not to be TOO angry when I yelled/explained that she needs to be careful around her brother. They have to learn somehow, you know? It's not all sweetness and light, but I'm just doing my best to show them how to be good siblings to each other.