The beginning of the end...

Well, it's official.  Molly has discovered crawling.  Though she has yet to use it for more than moving a half dozen inches forward, very soon she will be unstoppable.  I guess we now have to take baby-proofing more seriously...

Breaking News

This just in, our reporters in the field have found heretofore unknown evidence of a Molly cuddling.  The scientific establishment is both amazed and astounded, as well as shocked and chagrined.  Anonymous sources at the Really Important and Significant Institute of Bear Science have postulated that this "incident" may be attributable to a slight shiver in the orbit of Mars due to the recent arrival of the Mars rover Curiosity, or possibly exhaustion and recent consumption of a bottle of milk.  Stay tuned for more information as this story develops.

Molly playing and flapping

The Attack of Molly's Room

Molly was just minding her own business when these
two fish came out of nowhere and trapped her to the floor.
Luckily I was on hand to save her from this nefarious plot.

I guess the quilt was jonesing for some Mollybear...

You can see the rudeness of the quilt - it left a Molly crumb on its face.

Contrary to what I expected, Molly really enjoyed this game.

September is Molly Reading Month

This book not only tastes good, but is good for you!

Dr. Seuss is much more enjoyable when one is only wearing socks
(on Knox on fox on box...)

Molly quite likes to play with this book,
but everyone agrees that Judy's book sucks
(who really cares that "bunny is eating his good supper"?!)

Slinky: not just for eating anymore

You know about milk mustaches; have you heard about pea goatees?

A walk in the park with the babe with the power

Molly really likes chewing on the strap of her baby bjorn

It's exhausting being cute :)

Sitting is for losers...

Forget finger foods - fingers alone are delicious!

Arrgghh

In order to confuse possible burglars of Molly's delicious pear applesauce that Lisa made yesterday, we cleverly froze the fructose concoction into skulls and crossbones.  Now, don't be alarmed, this does not mean that the fruit is now poisonous; it's still the same goodness, but only disguised as poison.  We love our baby and do not want to poison her.  However, we are happy to give strangers the impression that we are feeding her poison, just like every other set of good parents.

ps. thanks for the ice cube trays, Dad!

Molly considers crawling, then decides it is too much effort

Molly has recently taken to lifting her belly off the ground and rocking back on her knees in preparation for crawling. Watch and learn, little Michael Holt! ;p

Making Baby Food: Part 2

Our freezer. 

In a previous post on the subject, I described how I make Molly's food. It has been fun, not overly time-consuming, and very, very cheap. Baby food costs $0.40-0.50/jar for fruit or veggies, and $0.70-0.90/jar for meat, depending on your grocery store. There is no reason to believe that store-bought baby food is bad for your child, full of preservatives, or will cause her to mutate. In fact, if you look at the labels, the closest thing to a preservative is ascorbic acid (vitamin C), which hardly counts. Therefore the reason I make my own is because it is so much cheaper.

My process has evolved since I started doing this, and in case anyone out there is planning to make baby food for his/her offspring, I thought I'd share some of the lessons I learned.

Briefly: choose a fruit or veggie, wash it, skin it, core it, boil it, grind it up in the food processor, pour it into ice cube trays, and freeze overnight. To serve, pull a few cubes out of the freezer and nuke them in a microwave-safe container. Stir in some iron-fortified single-grain cereal like oatmeal or rice cereal if you want, and add in some breast milk or formula to adjust the texture or temperature as needed.

Tips

1) Use silicone ice cube trays!!! All my cheap plastic trays are cracked and broken. The silicone ones don't do that, plus they are bendy and make it easy to push the cubes out.

2) If you want your baby to eat meat, make sure you camouflage it well. Meat is hard to puree and therefore hard to make the texture palatable for your infant. Chicken can be very stringy. I've found that cooking it all day in the slow cooker gets a better result than boiling. Despite video evidence to the contrary, Molly will eat meat if you drown out the taste and texture with other stuff-- especially sweet stuff. A typical meat meal for her therefore includes a cube of chicken/sweet potato + sweet peas + butternut squash. We've also successfully used peaches, pears, carrots, and sweet potatoes to drown out the meat. Note that all the meat cubes I made were already mixed with something else- sweet potatoes, regular potatoes, or rice. What I am describing is an additional layer of subterfuge. Oh and don't add too much breast milk or formula when you combine it to serve. This will make the puree thin and watery, effectively emphasizing the icky meat texture your baby hates so much (this is what happened in the video).

3) When boiling fruits and vegetables, you only need a small amount of water- much less than you might think. Fruits, especially, will contribute their own juice/water, and if you add too much exogenous water, the result will be thin and... watery.

4) Once frozen, remove the cubes from the trays and store them in quart bags. At first I thought I needed to store the cubes in the trays to keep them from sticking together. Not only is this not true, but it is a huge pain to pry cubes out with a knife every time you want to feed your baby.

I'm Molly's belly, and I approve this message. 

Molly cute like it's her job (and it is)

We found shoes for Molly at Goodwill. They are WAY
too big and completely unnecessary but they have
lightning bolts on the sides so who cares?  

Molly spends as much time as she can rolling around on the floor. 

Molly pretending like she can hold her bottle properly.

Molly loves the duckie that Aunt Katie gave her!
It even has a pacifier on the back of its head- what could be better?

This lion is from Julie and Zak. It is about 3 times Molly's size
and usually lives under the crib. Sarge and Phil are very jealous.  

Molly eating blueberries for the first time.
She makes this face the first bite of everything she eats.
She actually really likes blueberries.

Oh! 

Where's my food? 

Molly examining Sarge's foot. 

Molly frequently rolls under her dresser and gets stuck.

"Dad, seriously, stop taking pictures and get me out of here!"

Molly's first trip to a brewery. Don't tell Williamsburg Alewerks,
but she puked on the floor. It was classy.

Molly might be a vegetarian

She did not enjoy eating beef, potatoes, and carrots today even though she has eaten them the last two days without a problem.  We think she is considering vegetarianism.  Shortly after this video, she wolfed down some pears and oatmeal.  When we tried to give her chicken and rice later, more weird faces, gagging, and just opening her mouth and letting the food fall out.  The dogs thought it was great because they got to finish the food Molly rejected and lick the high chair tray.