A satisfied customer

Emme is officially eating solids.  We started a few weeks ago with some rice cereal and Stage 1 fruits and vegetables.  She had a little trouble learning to eat from the spoon -- she kept pushing out the food with her tongue--, but she caught on quickly and seemed to really like what she was eating.  After a few weeks of those, I moved her on to Stage 2 blends, which are a little thicker and easier to feed.  I've mixed and matched brands -- some Gerber with DHA, some organic stuff, some of the new blends that come in the squeeze pouches.  My approach with Ollie was just to expose him to as many different flavors as possible in order to get him used to eating a wide variety of foods for later. I don't know if that attributed to his willingness to eat almost anything or his penchant for broccoli and carrots, but it seems reasonable enough to repeat with Emme.  Some of the new organic squeezes include things like rutabaga and parsnips and purple carrots -- things I wouldn't recognize or know how to cook, let alone be likely to serve to a young child.

I know there are new (or actually old) approaches to starting solids that involve waiting until the child is old enough to feed herself and then letting her decide what to eat and how much.  But I haven't had any problems with either kid using the more traditional approach of baby food purees, and hopefully Emme will switch over to actual solids as easily as Oliver did.  I also am not adventurous enough of a cook to expose the kids to as many different kinds of food as are included in the baby foods.  It's pretty easy to tell when she's had enough, so I don't think we're overfeeding her.  The biggest thing I've had to deal with as a result of starting solids is a lot of poopy diapers.  We have definitely not had to resort to prunes with this one.

I'm definitely excited to see Emme try out new foods.  I've given her some banana, avocado, a blueberry, and a blackberry to try -- she's made some really funny faces.  I can hardly believe that she's already eating solids.  She'll be six months old in two days!  Fortunately, I have six more months of breastfeeding (at least) to help me enjoy her babyhood.

Game time

I've been looking forward for a while to playing games with Ollie.  Up to now, though, I couldn't think of any games that were simple enough for him to play.  Even "tag" in the backyard was a little confusing for him.  But recently he's learned to do some of the games on my iPod Touch, especially some matching games, and so I thought he might be able to play Memory.  When I got to Target today, though, I found Memory (the original version, not the new ones based on television shows and movies), Hi-Ho Cherry-O, and Candyland.  I think Candyland is still too confusing.  He knows his colors, but the idea of moving a playing piece is too complicated right now.  So I put in the bench for later.

Tonight, though, we opened up Memory and Hi-Ho Cherry-O and played a few games.  We did Memory first.  The game comes with 36 pairs, but I'm only including 6 pairs right now.  I explained the game to him as I put the pieces down and then took a turn first to model for him what to do.  He caught on very quickly and actually made several matches even before me.  But when I made my first match, he absolutely fell apart.  He understood the idea of taking turns and was doing fine with that, but he wanted me to the put the pair back and let him turn the pieces up.  He had as much of a tantrum as I've ever seen but got over it shortly thereafter when I started putting the game away.  I explained to him again that I got to keep the pair because I matched them, and he seemed to accept that and we moved on.  He actually won the first game (and no, I didn't let him win!), and we clapped every time one of us made a match.  We also practiced the words "match," "same," and "different," and he seemed to comprehend them.

After Memory, we got out Hi-Ho Cherry-O.  I spent several minutes talking about how the cherries are very small and so very dangerous for Emmeline.  I'm storing the game out of his reach so that he only plays with it when supervised.  I could see him putting one in his mouth and then choking or inadvertently putting one near Emme, who would definitely put it in her mouth.  I again modeled the first turn and then let Oliver try.  He learned how to move the spinner pretty well.  The game requires the ability to recognize the numbers 1-4 and count that many, too, so it's great practice for him.  He's learning the numbers slowly, and he's starting to understand the idea of counting out items.  I don't know that he really understand the goal of the game (which is, granted, a little random) or the role of the dog, bird, and tipped cherry bucket on the spinner (I just tell him what to do when his spinner lands on those).  He did try to "place" the spinner on certain spaces a few times, and I often had to remind him to spin the spinner when it was his turn (he usually just tried to copy whatever I had done on my turn).

It will be a long time before we can really sit down and "play a game" without a lot of modifications and modeling, but this was a fun first start.  He seems to really enjoy it, and it's nice to have something again that's clearly our thing to do that Emme's not ready for yet.  And as I expected, he's actually really good at Memory!

Sleeping with the Em-me

We've been home from our trip long enough now for me to finally have a sense of Emme's schedule.  I realized at some point that she's a three-nap girl.  She's ready to nap usually a little more than an hour after getting up.  She usually only takes a short nap, but it keeps her from getting really cranky mid-morning.  Then she takes a mid-day nap, and it's usually the longest one of the day, sometimes closer to 2-3 hours.  Later in the day, especially if her mid-day nap is shorter, she sleeps for another hour or so.  Then she's up for 2-3 hours until bedtime.  Emme gets some baby food between 5-5:30 (except tonight, when we were out, so she ate later).  Then she's ready for bed between 7-7:30.  I nurse her, but she's usually not that hungry.  I rock her a little with her pacifier, then put her in her crib.  She's awake when I put her in the crib, and 10-20 minutes later she usually starts fussing and crying.  I let her fuss or cry for a little while before I go upstairs.  As soon as I sit down in the rocker with her and giver her the pacifier back, she pretty much passes out.  She closes her eyes, relaxes in my arms, and begins to fall asleep.  I rock her for just a few minutes before I put her back in the crib, and then she's down for the night.  At some point, she'll need to learn to get to sleep without that second visit, but for now, this is a huge improvement and not a huge hassle to help her get to sleep.  And to be completely frank, I love those few minutes of a practically sleeping baby cuddled in my arms.  I love how being with me some instantly calms and soothes her.  She'll grow out of it eventually, so for now, I'm savoring it.

For a few nights, Em would wake up and nurse again between 1-3am and then would wake up for the day between 5:30 (ugh) and 7:30.  If she was up really early, I would usually take her to bed, let her squirm and get sleepy again, and then she'd go back to sleep until 7:30 or 8.  The last few days, though, she's made it through the night.  She was asleep between 7:30 and 8pm, and then up for the day between 5:30 and 6 (did I mention, ugh).  The first time she did it, I woke around 3am and found that my body had not been notified that there would be no early morning feeding.  After a shirt change, I went back to sleep.  I woke up again last night but fortunately made it through without an outfit change.  I'm hoping that if this feat repeats tonight, I sleep through the night, too.

Boob snob?

Emme spent a few hours with Hailey and Eva, our neighbor's daughter, at Eva's house today while I got my hair cut and went to the dentist.  Emme got up around 6am today (after sleeping all night from around 7:30pm!) and nursed well, then was sleepy by 7am and cat napped as we took Ollie to daycare and ran an errand to Target.  I nursed her briefly before dropping her off at Eva's around 10am and left two bottles for the duration.  I got back a little over four hours later to learn that Emme had a nice nap in the middle of the day -- but hadn't yet eaten anything, despite Hailey's best attempts.  I can't be sure as this is the first time in 3 1/2 weeks that I've left her, but Hailey and I both wondered if she just didn't want her milk from the bottle.  Sure enough, as soon as we got home she nursed well and is now down for another nap.  I've tried to warn her that come fall -- or actually, come mid-July when we're leaving the kids with my parents for a week -- she's going to have to get reacquainted with a bottle.  Here's hoping she's just having a light eating day and hasn't become a full-on boob snob.

For Father's Day

Anyone who knows anything about what the last year has been like at our house will understand this selection for Wes's Father's Day card.  And in a stroke of irony, Wes had to use the plunger on the upstairs toilet Sunday morning.

Dear Husband, Part 54

I got out some clothes for Emme yesterday morning, but Wes had the task of dressing her. As he was getting her clothes on, he started singing the Tim McGraw song: "She was killing me in that mini skirt."

Watch your back

I was sitting at the computer yesterday afternoon while the kids were playing behind me.  Oliver came over and said, "Mom, Emme's under the green blanket."  Umm, yeah.