Nursing Your Kids

When Sam was a baby I was a wreck about starting solids. I wanted to make sure I did everything right so that he’d end up being a good eater, not a picky kid who will only eat foods that are white.

All of my anxiety was for naught. He preferred breastmilk to solid foods until he was a year old and (due to circumstances beyond my control) discovered french fries. After that he pretty much ate anything and everything, from spicy Thai curries to beet and beet greens risotto (though never very much at a time). Then he got picky. Now he doesn’t like (insert random food of the day here) but he likes it sometimes but not now and he’d prefer noodles with butter and cheese.

Anyway, I pretty much learned my lesson that kids are who they are and they’ll eat what they want to eat when they want to eat it. So when at six months Ben wasn’t into eating solids I didn’t think much of it. At seven months I started to get a little worried and wondered if I should try harder. I didn’t. At eight months he got interested, and he LOVES eating food.

He eats anything you put in front of him now including, broccoli, green beans, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, meatloaf, chicken, carrots, pears, applesauce, bread, pasta, waffles, cereal and soup. He cries for more if the bowl is empty and can keep himself occupied in a high chair with finger foods for half an hour or more. The other night he easily ate half of my mashed potatoes after eating pasta, broccoli, green beans, and pears with oatmeal while I got dinner ready. It’s amazing how different he is from his brother.

The moral of the story is don’t stress over starting solids. Your kid will eat when he’s good and ready. And if he doesn’t eat a lot, it’s probably because he’s not that hungry. You can’t make a kid eat, all you can do is provide a variety of healthy foods.

The baby is sick today and even sick, with a runny nose and fever, he’s such a pleasure. He slept for most of the day and when he wasn’t sleeping he was cuddly, fussing only when I changed his diaper or put him down for a minute. Seriously, this kid is the best baby.

I hate to compare and for the most part I try not to, but when his brother was a baby I thought he was a really good baby. But this baby? Is the sweetest, most even tempered darling of a baby I’ve ever met. He is so happy, so good natured. He smiles all the time. Even tonight after we plopped his feverish body in a lukewarm tub with his rowdy older brother he busted out a smile. He’s so good.

He’s been sitting up quite well for a while now and has hit the stage where he WANTS things. He cries when his brother takes a toy away even if the toy is quickly replaced by another. He’s not quite mobile, though he is able to scoot himself around a little bit and occasionally gets up on all fours and rocks, practicing.

He’s still an excellent nurser but he now enjoys solid food too. He loves pears and applesauce and though I haven’t pureed them especially, he really liked the cumin spiced sweet potatoes I fed him from my quesadilla last night. Carrots aren’t his favorite but he’ll eat them if he must. He loves to be spoonfed and has no time for feeding himself. I freeze his food in ice cube trays thinking a cube would be plenty, but he easily eats two and three at a time. I think I’m going to have to suck it up and buy commercial rice cereal for this kid. Even though I think it tastes like cardboard I bet he’d love it.

His thighs are enormous. He’s not a fat baby, but he’s solid and his thighs are the meatiest thighs I’ve ever seen up close on a baby. I really need pictures of those suckers. They are michelin man thighs on an otherwise trim baby. I love them. He’s very handsome. His hair has lightened up considerably but it’s still thick and even. His eyes have somehow managed to stay blue.

He just started clapping and it is delightful. He is delightful. He waves just a little bit, though not with any regularity. He can pass toys from hand to hand quite competently and is working on his pincer grasp. He can grip a cheerio between his thumb and forefinger and bring it to his mouth but the system breaks down there and he can’t quite get it in.

Motherhood, parenthood, is full of truths and cliches. They grow up so fast. I am so sad that his babyhood is flying by so quickly. I am enjoying him so much and he’ll be big before I know it.

It’s national delurking day! Leave a comment and say hi.

I saw this at the Boston Mamas blog via Parent Hacks:

“So everyone (or many of us) get gnarly feet in the winter months, and I am always in search of the miracle product that will soften my feet. I recently cleaned out my “mother drawer” and began using my Lansinoh lanolin breast cream on my feet, and voila - cracked heels and rough toes be gone! Four days of use and it’s like having a new pair of feet! A fun way to repurpose if you’re not planning on breastfeeding for a while.”

I was reminded that there’s really no shortage of ways to use extra lanolin cream. If still have some lying around the house and haven’t passed it along to another nursing mom here are some other uses:

Try slathering your feet in the cream and covering them with cotton socks before bed for extra soft feet.

Lansinoh can be used for lanolizing wool diaper covers or nursing pads. There’s a video here and I found some great instructions with photos here.

It’s great for moisturizing dry or chapped hands (wear gloves over your hands at bedtime for extra soft hands).

Use it for a soothing, healing lip balm.

Try it for diaper rash- it’s similar to A&D ointment or Aquaphor in texture.

Use it to unstick a zipper.

Use it as a cuticle treatment

Soothe a thumb (or finger) that’s chapped or sore from your little one’s sucking.

Use on your dog’s feet if your dog’s paws get sore and cracked from walking on salt treated sidewalks in the winter.

I can’t believe I only posted three times last month. I guess after posting (almost) every day in November I needed a break and with my husband home for more than a week over Christmas my schedule was interrupted. I’ve been reading the breastfeeding news but so many other breastfeeding bloggers have been posting about it that I gave myself license to slack. But it’s a new year and I’m ready to get back into the swing of things.

I started off the year by watching live television, something I haven’t done in months. 20/20 aired an episode about extreme motherhood on Friday night. I missed the first segment but tuned in in time for a creepy bit about fake babies and the rest of the show. Unsurprisingly, I was annoyed and disappointed by the entire show.

The bit about home birth was sketchy at best and failed to consult with homebirth midwives. I’ve had two happy, successful hospital births and I was still irritated by the lack of information given in the segment.

The extended breastfeeding segment was the part I was most interested in seeing. As soon as the segment started I knew it wouldn’t be worth my while. The first woman profiled was nursing 2 1/2 year old twins. Seriously? That’s extreme? The rest of the segment was equally disappointing. Sure they managed to find a perfectly likable family with a mother still nursing a kindergartner, and the woman who nursed her kids until they were eight, but I felt like the segment was way too focused on the men and whether or not they were still getting sex from their wives.