So what have we been up to in the interim? "What haven't we been up to?" is probably the better question.
Our niece's 2nd birthday...
The CF Walk...
(...from which I only narrowly escaped with my vision intact)
(photos stolen from my SIL Emily's facebook page!)
...And our sweet baby boy turned 6 months old!!!
Can you even believe it?! Along with Eli's half-birthday came fruits and veggies (and learning to make my own baby food), the transition to crib sleeping at night, and the realization that August is just around the corner (also known as The Great Day Care Hunt).
Don't be too impressed about the whole MYO baby food thing (or maybe you weren't impressed anyway...) - it's really just a matter of figuring out how best to soften, puree and store everyday fruits and veggies from the grocery store! I've found Momtastic's Wholesome Homemade Baby Food website to be EXTREMELY helpful. So many baby food recipes just say "bake" or "steam", then "puree" or "mash", and "thin" or "thicken" and then "freeze", with very little detail on exactly how one should "bake" or "puree" or "freeze". Let me tell you, there's a best way to do these things, and trying to fly by the seat of your pants can be quite frustrating.
I started out just trying to do it on my own. I microwaved some sweet potatoes, scooped out the "meat", mixed with a hand mixer (adding filtered water to thin as needed), and spooned it into baby food storage containers that I bought at Target. It looked like a pretty well-pureed mixture. Once thawed, it was far thicker than when I had frozen it. Not a terrible thing - just means you can thin it and make it stretch farther. But I quickly realized that it wasn't homogeneous enough - there were still tiny lumps and the texture seemed to bother him. It wasn't a nice, smooth, uniform puree like the baby food from the store :-( At the same time I was making the sweet potatoes I also mashed some bananas with a fork (which is, believe it or not, a recommended method). I mashed and mashed until I could mash no more. It was pretty well mashed. Then I froze it. And it turned brown. And it was still kinda lumpy. And I was ticked. And I ended up dumping it all... 5 bananas down the drain (literally).
Then I consulted Momtastic, bought some butternut squash and organic apples, and made the best squash puree and baby applesauce you've ever tasted! I cut the squash in half and baked it open-side-down in a few inches of water, peeled, cored and sliced the apples into cubes and baked them in enough water to cover them, threw them in the blender, hit "puree", added some of the baking water to thin as needed (which also adds back any nutrients that may have leeched out during baking), and "Voila!" SO much easier and the end results were both fantastic. Looks (and tastes) just like store-bought baby food, but I know exactly what's in it because I made it myself :-)
I started out using the Baby Brezza baby food maker's storage container system (because they were the only baby food storage containers in stock at Target the day I went looking, and I was anxious). I still have them (and have food in them) for now, but I'm not a big fan for several reasons...
- The lids are a pain to take off, and they don't really "snap" on like it seems that they should, so you're never quite sure that they're on all the way.
- They have this useless dial thing on top to select a day of the week (presumably the day you made the food), but if you're storing for longer than a week what good does that do you? It would just be an extra feature that I didn't use, except that it traps water and never seems to dry all the way, which bothers me.
- It's no fault of these specific containers, but I quickly realized that it's difficult to microwave-thaw a compact container of a thick substance. It obviously heats very unevenly, but since it's concentrated and compact, I found that the top and sides were very quickly boiling and popping (and making a mess) while the rest of it was still frozen solid. Thawing these containers in hot water is a painstakingly slow process - when I do that, I thaw it just enough that the frozen block of food will slide out into a bowl and then microwave it.
Better system: the old tried-and-true ice cube trays. Momtastic suggests pouring your puree into the tray, letting it freeze, and then transferring the cubes to freezer bags, which I find to be a great system. That way you can keep using the trays for more/other foods that you're making (so you don't have to buy a bunch of trays to store everything in), and a bag of ice cubes can be shoved into any number of differently shaped/sized spaces in the freezer, as opposed to a big tray. A standard ice cube tray makes 1-ounce cubes, so you have little single-ounce servings and you can pull as few or as many as you need for a particular meal. And you can stick the cube in a microwave-safe bowl to quickly thaw it in the microwave (obviously being sure to stir it up very well and test it before serving, since microwaves do create hot spots!), or stick it in a ziplock and submerge it in warm water if you have time to do a slower thaw.
In the interest of actually posting a post for a change, I'm going to stop here. I'll get back to the sleeping-in-his-own-room thing and discuss our day care hunt in a new post, hopefully sometime soon!
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