Friday, February 11, 2011

7 Quick Takes (Vol. 16)



#1 - We woke up this morning to discover our mailbox decapitated and spread across the lawn. Fortunately, the executioners were very nice and put a note by our door saying sorry and explaining that they slid off the road and leaving their phone number. Sigh. Add it to the list of things to do. Hope they weren't too banged up by the experience as they slid straight into our rather deep ditch.

The Mailbox Before:


Poor Thing Didn't Know What Hit It:




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#2 - For the first time in quite awhile (over a year?), I think I'm glutined. Not 100% positive on the cause; however, I'm thinking it's the rice-cereal from WalMart. We are on WIC and one of the things you can buy is cereal. Normally I shop at Dillons and had tried their GF rice cereal and did great. Last time we went to WalMart and I got theirs. Pretty sure it's making me sick. Probably just cross-contamination (which they do warn about). Going to go off of that for awhile and see if it helps. I hate this feeling; general tiredness, headaches, muscle tension, upset stomach. Plus I'm now gunked up with a sore throat and stuffy nose. Not sure if it's in addition to feeling glutened, caused by the gluten, or just my immune system got shot down by an overload of cross-contamination. Either way--yuck. Living on hot water with honey and lemon right now. And a lot of quit-deao (Thai chicken noodle soup--the best food ever when feeling sick).

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#3 - After a foot of snow and then an additional few inches of snow, it's supposed to get to 50 this weekend. I can't wait! I'm so sick of winter. Global Warming.....really?

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#4 - I have health insurance again at long last. The week of the foot of snow, I literally didn't go anywhere for a week because my insurance didn't kick in and somehow it seemed like just begging the fates to get me by driving on roads that were poorly plowed in a city that freaks out and drives like maniacs when the weather report says that their might possibly in the near future be a flake or two of snow or ice or rain.

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#5 - Tried a new recipe for gluten free crumpets the other day. Yum! Very pleased with how they came out. Not quite the same texture as the traditional British crumpet that I love so very much. But still a really, really good bread. Am going to be making this one a lot more! I love light bread, and this definitely falls in that category. Recipe from Betty Hagman's The Gluten Free Gourmet Cooks Comfort Foods.

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#6 - Baby-led feeding (BLF) decision. For those who still don't know what this BLF thing is basically it's the idea of not pureeing, spoon feeding, flying food into your kids mouth but allowing your child to feed him/herself from the beginning of starting solids. As one web-site put it: "You just hand them the food in a suitably-sized piece and if they like it they eat it and if they don’t they won’t." (see Baby Led Weaning for a further, if brief, description of what it's all about).

For the most part I really like this concept. The general warning label that comes with it is that this is a messy experience, especially at the beginning. One website talked about preparing twice as much food as you think baby will eat. Half for flinging everywhere and half for consuming. In other words, you're letting your baby experience food, real food, play with it, learn how to handle it, swallow it on her own, reject it if she doesn't want it, etc.

After doing some reading and evaluating, I think I have a plan. Because I love plans. Even if the plan doesn't quite work out as I intend. As Eisenhower explained it: "In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable."

There are two potential downfalls that quickly came to mind when I was looking at doing this over getting into the whole puree/airplane scene.

1. Learning to eat this way could take awhile. Now, for me, not a big deal. I want Blueberry to breastfeed for a good amount of time. But I know for some people getting baby off of milk and onto food is a priority--and this wouldn't be the fastest means of doing that.

2. Given both my food issues and Chris', I do have concerns about introducing some foods too early. And I want to watch out for combining foods too quickly and not being able to check for reactions, etc.

So, given that concern, basically I'm going to follow the general idea of baby-led feeding but introduce foods a little more carefully than what others following this idea might do. In essence, introduce foods one at a time more like people traditionally do with purees, but do it in more of the BLF style. Then as I know which foods we're doing okay with, mix it up a bit more. So far we've had avocado success and a very green mess! Pictures to be soon posted on My Life in Scraps.

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#7 - It's 9:20 and I'm still in my PJ's. Off to go make myself look marginally more presentable. Not planning on going anywhere though given the way I feel. But there's just something about being dressed and looking at least half-way decent that makes you feel better, at least it does me. Happy Friday to all!

5 comments:

Hillery said...

Definitely check the ingredients of the cereal! When buying cereal last week I looked at buying the wal-mart rice or corn chex instead of name brand. Right there in the ingredients was "barley malt." So NOT gluten free. Therefore, the name brand guaranteed gluten free it was! Which was actually cheaper anyways since I had a coupon for it. So sorry you are glutened. I am as well, from homemade cookies and we don't know what the culprit was, yuck. Third day of a headache and todays is much much worse. Stupid! Love you!

Ouph said...

Interestingly enough, this one didn't have barley malt in it (saw those that did, though!). However, it does have the "might have wheat/something or other" contamination label in it. I'm normally okay with stuff like that, but apparently not this one.

Mercutio said...

Take pics of the mailbox!

almamater said...

I think just going into WalMart could contaminate a person ;) I avoid it like the plague.

As far as feeding, you could always go the Eskimo route in which Mother pre-chews the food for Baby. I have an acquaintance who gave birth while living in Alaska among the natives and, well, when in Rome do as the Romans. She said it was a pretty effective method. Juju really enjoyed some home made chicken broth this week; I did not hand her the spoon, though.

Ouph said...

Almamater - yuck on the regurgitated food! As for WalMart...yeah...avoid as much as possible. But sometimes convenience of location and mix of items available outweigh everything.

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