First foods

I first learned about Baby-led weaning a few years ago from a blog that I follow. The blogger, a mom with two young children, wrote a post on ways their family saved money while their children were babies and toddlers. One of the ways she mentioned was Baby-led weaning, which she described in her post. I was fascinated, and immediately went on to do some more research of my own. The practice very much appealed to me for more than one reason. (See below for links to learn more about BLW.) So once I had a good idea of what BLW actually was, I decided it would be a perfect way to introduce solid foods to my kids.

While in BC over the Christmas holidays, Lauren - then not quite 6-months-old - had her first few tastes of food. As BLW suggests, I had been planning to wait until she was at least 6mos before starting her on solids, but she has been interested in watching people eat and reaching for food and plates for quite awhile now that it just seemed unfair to make her wait much longer when she was very obviously ready to try solid foods. While out to eat at a Taiwanese restaurant, I saw Roiboos tea on the menu and, on a whim, decided to order some and let Lauren have a taste as it's supposed to be great for soothing babies with gas, even from a young age. We offered her small tastes from a spoon and she loved it and kept sipping it down until we decided she'd probably had enough. The next week, my mum bought some baby rusk crackers (the melt-in-baby's-mouth kind), so we sat her in a high chair at the table and gave her one. She was very eager to reach for it and put it straight in her mouth. She gave some interesting (dubious) looks as she tasted it, but kept on putting it back into her mouth for more tastes, and even tried sucking on the bib where it had dropped when she lost hold of the actual cracker. In the end, she seemed to be a fan of the taste, if not the soggy, melt-in-the-mouth texture.

(Photo credit: Glenda Quiring)

(Photo credit: Glenda Quiring)

When Lauren and I got back home the next week, Jonathan and I spent an evening ordering a few items that we needed in order for Lauren to begin eating solid food in earnest. In hindsight, we probably should have gotten them before Christmas so we could have already had them and been right ready to jump into solid foods as soon as we returned home. The items came quickly enough, though, and when they arrived on Monday afternoon we quickly opened the boxes, set up the new high chair, buckled Lauren in, snapped on her new bib, and gave her some cucumber sticks to gnaw. She loved them! She chewed on them for quite awhile until she had sucked off all the soft seedy parts and wasn't interested in the rest of the cucumbers anymore. She still seemed to want to chew on something, though, so I found a silicone Food Hugger for her to chomp on for a bit since we didn't have any other baby-appropriate food items in the house right then. She was quite happy to munch on that, too, even though it wasn't real food.

I think it's safe to say that our first couple dabbles into solids went well, and that Lauren is more than ready to explore the world of food and is loving the start of her BLW journey!

Links to learn more
If Baby-led weaning sounds interesting to you and you'd like to learn more, here are a few links you can read to begin your research into BLW.
RapleyWeaning.com & BLW leaflet.pdf & BLW guidelines.pdf
What is babyled weaning - BabyLed
Baby-led Weaning: Helpful resources - Live Renewed
Baby Led Weaning public Facebook group

Swimming class

Lauren had an adventurous couple days. Yesterday morning, she and I went to a Music Together demo class (we sat in on a class currently in session to see how it worked). It was a fun 45 minutes of singing, moving to the music, and "playing" various baby-safe instruments. Lauren intently watched the other babies - all older than her and most of them quite mobile - and took everything in. She especially loved the parts when we all stood up and moved with the music, and she grinned through most of those times. I didn't take any pictures since we were active and involved the whole class, so you'll just have to imagine her little smile. :) I think it was good to visit the class, but I'm not sure I'll sign up for the 10-week spring session. Even though the classes say 0+, I think Lauren would get a lot more out of it if she was more mobile and could do some of the actions and activities. Also, I think the class is geared more for parents who don't have much musical experience or training, and both Jonathan and I have quite a bit between us, so we could probably do many of the same things with Lauren at home. I did love the socialization aspects of the class, though (for both Lauren and me), so I will think about it, but likely will just try to get to story time at our local library instead, at least for the time being.

In the evening, we had our next adventure of the day; Lauren went to her first swimming class. She has always enjoyed the water (well, except for her first sponge bath in the hospital when she was a day old) and loves wiggling and splashing in her baths, and in the pool or hot tub the few times we've taken her in at our complex. I thought it would be fun for her to have some more time in the pool, while also getting to see other babies and kids and interact with them. I found a couple parent-tot swim classes in the area and checked out their websites before deciding on one. I signed us up for an evening class that is just after Jonathan gets out of work so that he and I can alternate going in the pool with Lauren and both get to experience the class with her. This week Jonathan took her in. They were the only parent-kid group in the class, but apparently there are several others who come most weeks. Lauren loved being in the pool and although she wasn't able to do all of the activities, she seemed to enjoy looking around at the others in the pool and interacting with the swim instructor. I snapped a couple pictures and took a short video, but unfortunately for some reason the lighting in the pool area is really strange and the photos and videos are a terrible colour of green. Jonathan was able to edit the pictures to lighten the colour, but the video is as is. Hope you enjoy it anyway. This evening we had a make-up lesson since we missed last week due to not yet being back home from Christmas travels. I took Lauren into the pool today and again we were the only ones in the class. Lauren had fun again, but hopefully next week there will be more people in our class so she can watch the other babies and toddlers and learn what she's supposed to do for the various activities.

Gearing up for winter

In preparation to go up to Canada for Christmas, yesterday we decided to try Lauren in a couple warm outfits we had stored away for her to use in the (hopefully) cold and snow.

One was an outfit we had found on REI's clearance webpage this summer when Lauren was really tiny and we had actually been looking for a sun hat for her. We never did find a sun hat, but instead saw a 6-month+ jacket and snow pants set at a vastly reduced rate. Even though the heat of summer was making it nearly impossible to even imagine snow and cold, we decided to jump on the deal and hoped that Lauren would fit it by Christmas. The snow pants fit pretty well, but the jacket gave her a lot of extra padding! :D

Yep, fingers can still get to the mouth :)

The other outfit was a fuzzy, brown, one-piece zip-up with bear ears on the hood and bear faces on the feet that her Nana in Maine sent her. The legs were a little too long still and the arms were quite a bit too long, but the second we zipped her in, we couldn't stop giggling at her bundled up bear-self and couldn't quit taking pictures!

Robot-bear

Practicing her bear growl :D

I think Lauren will be cozy and toasty warm during our fun in the snow in BC in a few more weeks! :)

American Thanksgiving weekend

Lauren's first American Thanksgiving was her second Thanksgiving celebration. She had experienced a small Canadian Thanksgiving meal back in October when her Aunt Becky was visiting. For this occasion, we spent a quiet and restful Thanksgiving Day at home with each other.

We started the day with a Thanksgiving story. The only one I could find in my personal library was an Amelia Bedelia book. It was a longer one and obviously over Lauren's head, but I still enjoyed snapping a picture of Jonathan reading to her. About halfway through the book, Lauren took a break from reading and played with some toys instead, but kept looking back at Jonathan and I as we finished reading through the book together. At one point she got most of her body off the ground. It might not be too long until she's able to roll from her back to her front!

Intent on the story (for the moment)

"You guys still back there?"

In the afternoon, after Lauren woke up from a nap, we went outside and got some pictures of her and a few family pictures together with the leaves in our apartment complex.

Wrapped in a blanket to keep her warm

Needed a little something to munch... ;)

After Lauren woke up from her late afternoon nap, Jonathan took a few videos of her and me. In the first one, I taught Lauren a Thanksgiving song that my friend Danielle had taught me and my fellow volunteers during our US Thanksgiving dinner in Tanzania in 2010. In the second one, we were finally able to capture Lauren's adorable laugh on camera. Until that evening, we never seemed to have a camera handy when she broke out into laughter, so we were really happy to finally catch her giggle in action!

We were rather delinquent in actually having Thanksgiving meal. A couple from our church hosted an "orphans" Thanksgiving meal and we contemplated going, but all we really wanted was to just relax together at home, so we ended up doing that instead. And since we'd had a great Thanksgiving meal, complete with both pumpkin and apple pies for dessert, when Becky was visiting, we didn't especially feel like we had to have another fancy meal. However, we did want to do something a little more special than usual, so on Friday we walked to the grocery store (which, happily, was much less busy than usual), got the ingredients for some special dishes, and prepped the food that afternoon. Then on Sabbath when we came home from church we had a small modified Thanksgiving meal, just some favourite dishes, with a dessert of a store-bought pumpkin pie for Jonathan (I don't enjoy it) and a Q-family special, homemade cheesecake. It was simple and delicious, just our style!

On Sunday we carved out a little time to take a dip in our apartment complex's hot tub. The pool isn't heated, so once the weather got cooler we've taken to just warming ourselves in the hot tub. I'm always super nervous about taking Lauren in pools and hot tubs because I really don't want her to have an accident... Of course she's always wearing a swim diaper when we go in, but I still get nervous about potential leaks. Thankfully, it hasn't happened yet and hopefully that trend continues. Lauren loves the water, and quite enjoys our warm dips.

Lauren is sporting my baby swimsuit. The elastic is pretty useless, but the fabric has held up great since I used it 30 years ago!

Practicing her back float...while chomping on her fingers. :)

Wrinkly feet, time to get out

Bundled up against the cold air

Haircuts

I've been needing to get a haircut for a while (like months), but it has become imperative now that Lauren's beginning to learn how to grab and hold and tug. So last Sunday two of us got haircuts. Now the little one just needs some more hair to grow. :)