Hooray For Boobies! Part 2

So where were we?

I brought my giant baby home from the hospital, with post-caesarian instructions not to walk up stairs of carry more than ten pounds. They handed me a ten-pound baby while saying this. In my home, the bathroom was on the second floor, and there was NO WAY I could live in a bedroom for a month.

But back to the nursing. This kid was a fantastic nurser. Even in the early weeks, he would actually unlatch if his latch wasn't right, and try again. During the day, we nursed so constantly, there were only about 30 minute breaks from the end of one to the start of another. Each time he did both sides, about 15 minutes each side, but I stopped counting and trusted him after the first week or so. Sometimes it was 20 minutes, and he'd have a three-boober, left, right, left. Sometimes only three minutes a side and then done. The forty-minutes session was always the norm for us.

Nights were a little tougher, trying to get him to stay awake long enough to have a complete meal. There was certainly NO problem waking him at first, as he slept in 90-minute sections all night long, but he would fall asleep after the first side, and I would change his diaper to get him woken up enough for the second side. My big "startle the baby' trick was to spit in his ear. Gross, I know, but required very little energy from me, and I had very little energy for almost two years.

The first six weeks, it stung every time he latched on, which is well within the range of normal. This is one reason so many women give up so quickly. The nerves are getting used to the sensation and need time to adjust. That's why they tell you to switch the position the baby is nursing in every time. I did that for about two weeks, then figured we'd nurse in the most comfortable position for both of us, the cradle hold. The "football hold", where baby's feet are behind you (can you say, awkward) is apparently for women who have a lot of abdominal pain after the c-section. Mine hurt, but not enough to change the baby's position. That’s' what the Boppy was for. I think the doctor's advice had not caught up with the wonderful nursing pillows out there, or I'm just super tough.

He nursed, and nursed, and I ate and ate. People would say, "Oh, is he eating again?" And I'd say, "No, he's still eating." It was all one big meal for him.

We nursed everywhere. The Water Taxi, in front of the coffee shop almost every day, on airplanes, at friend's houses, basically wherever we were. I never tried to cover him with a blanket, even after he got older and got distractible, popping on and off. Once we nursed while walking down the street. He was in his sling, and hadn't taken a nap at all that day.

As far as pumping, I think it's a great thing, and highly recommend it, but I hated it, and did it probably 10 times. It wasn't a supply issue, as my boy just grew and grew, but I just didn’t feel like pumping on top of nursing all the time. I also had no good reason, and not-so-secretly loved having a reason to keep my angel near me at all times.

He had a pumped bottle at 8 weeks, which he had no problem with, but other than those two times in the hospital, formula never crossed his lips. I never felt the need to give him formula so he would sleep better or anything like that, because I knew too much. Formula does not equal sleep, and anyway, what else did I have to do? I wasn't working, had no other children, and meeting his needs is my job, so why not do it? Plus, I think I was too tired to think about it, and it was always easy just to pop a boob in him.

I don’t have any big problem with formula, I just didn’t see the point for us. Plus it's smelly and a hassle. I never minded taking my shirt off in public before, why stop now? We never used a pacifier either, although I tried about three times. He didn't take it at all, and threw up the third time. Again, no point in our family. He was also one of those babies that just eats and eats, and in turn, allowed me to eat and eat.

Overall, things went really well in the breastfeeding area. He didn't sleep, but I always figured he was just too busy.

The next installment will cover the rest of the first year, and the challenges of nursing an acrobat.
Thank for reading,
-Anne

Too hot to write

It's 90 degrees in Baltimore, and the hottest space in the house is in front of the computer. I think it's time to start lobbying for my own laptop. We have one that 7 years old, but it's slow and heavy and wants to burn your legs off. Plus it seems to be full. I figure between the homeschooling, food research, and my celebrity news addiction, there's no way we can survive much longer on one and a half Macs. Am I being ridiculous? I don’t think so. Throw in the pinched nerve in my back and I think we've got a winner.

I've been getting REALLY good at making J's food before we go out. It usually takes about half an hour, but it's worth it to know exactly what’s going in him. Now, if I could figure out what exactly is making him sick, we'd be ok. I brought champagne grapes, cooked carrots and broccoli, and safe graham crackers today to SalsaPolkaPalooza at the Creative Alliance in Highlandtown, and the boy ended up eating a blue snoball, a lollipop, and a donut (I Know, SUPER bad, but I was wearing down). He had a loose poo about 30 minute after the donut, but he'd had one this morning, too, so was it the donut? Who knows? I think it really is time to go elimination for a few weeks. I'll stop talking about it now, and just do it. I think I've been feeling like going on the ED is really admitting he has a problem with food, and that it's serious. I love food so much, I can barely stand the thought of not having huge portions of it in my life.

Speaking of which, time for the "after J is asleep" meal. Chococake!

Thanks for reading,
-Anne

It never ends

We had gone for almost a week without any food reactions, but one showed up again today. He's been egg, dairy and peanut-free since we got home, so I'm hoping it's just residual. They say it can take up to three weeks for the body to clear the reactions, and he didn't go yesterday, so maybe the extra stress made something happen.

I get so tired of chasing this stuff down, that I feel like I'm not feeding a child, I'm managing his poop. I might have said that here before; I'll have to check. I sometimes wonder if it''s even worth it trying to narrow stuff down. It's not an allergy, so it won't kill him to have this stuff, but it sure is disturbing to see blood where it isn't suppossed to be. It also seems to be random sometimes, like when he had pizza and was totally fine.

I may need to go for the Top Eight Elimination diet, removing soy, milk, corn, wheat, fish, peanuts, treenuts, and eggs, and then build from there. I'm pretty confident that he's OK with wheat, just because he eats Cheerios all the time and bread and stuff, but the others are still open for discussion, I suppose. I'll have to try it out.

We ate out tonight, at The Wharf Rat, a pub around the corner. They have good fries there, and a jukebox that James really likes. They're totally empty when we go in usually, so he can wander around and dance undisturbed. There's also a phone booth from England, and he likes to go inside and pretend it's his house. I had the oysters, and then remembered they're out of season. You're only suppossed to eat oysters in months that have an "r" in them. May through August are the off season. I'm not sure if it's a holdover form the days befroe refrigeration, or something to do with replenishing the stock, but I usually stick to it.

Now, I must attend to the bath, and scrub the dirt from my kid's toes. He's singing, "It's raining, it's pouring" which means all the water is about to end up on the floor.

Thanks for reading,
Anne

Snack time!

We are back in Baltimore! Even the sun shines brighter here.

Of course I went to Whole Foods twice the first week, but we're still living mainly on the food leftover from the people who stayed here. Lots of frozen turkey burgers and pasta with marinara.

No big cooking news yet, although I made sausage tonight, which neither of us ate. I'm guessing it was not the best thing to cook in 90-degree weather.

J is doing GREAT foodwise. No reactions for almost a week now. I'm purifying my child. Myself, however, I'm on a bit of a food frenzy.

After the boy goes to sleep, I always want to snack, even if I'm not hungry. I want pizza and chocolate and all kinds of dairy products. I bought some frozen chocolate pudding cakes from Trader Joe's, and I'm currently eating Nana's Cocina Tortilla Chips. Yummers.

We bought a Tripp Trapp for the boy, and I was really excited about it. I read all these reviews that say how their child will sit for an hour in it, they eat more, etc. So far, I've had it two days, and that's not quite the case in our house yet. I've noticed he doesn't spend the entire meal kicking the table, so at least there's that. I'm still trying to adjust the footrest to the right height, though. He seems to like putting his legs under him, instead of flat on the footrest, which makes it tricky. He also wants to sit sideways in the chair, which freaks me out because there's no armrest, and the seatbelt is basicaly worthless. My sister in law has it for her 6 month old, who is sitting by herself just fine, and she says the baby is held in fine by the support bar, which is sold seperately. I removed the beslt, and managed to destroy one of the componets while doing so. Oops.

I never bought a highchair for J, mostly due to space issues. We had a clip-on chair from about 7 months until he was a little over a year, and then one of those "tushie cooshie" boosters. They're soft, and don't need to be strapped on to the table or the child. It worked ok, but I like that the Tripp Trapp can be adjusted so specifically. He's at the right height of the table now, instead of having to eat with his elbows flared out like he's trying to do the chicken dance. I think he'll get used to it in a few days.

I'm giving in to the Papa John's urge now, and going downstairs to order pizza.

Thanks for reading,
-Anne

Hiatus

We are flying out tomorrow, a good 20 hours of travel door to door, so it will be a few days before I'm back again. Look for the overexcited post about organic, sugar-free, nitrate-free turkey slices.

Thanks for reading,
-Anne

Pizza time!

Now, in the last few days of my stay here, I finally got around to making pizza.

I even used the brick yeast, that previously frightened me, and now I think I'll never use dried yeast again. This stuff was amazing.

I brought from Baltimore a simple dough recipe from Bon Appetit Magazine, one of the two cooking magazines I subscribe to. I get Gourmet, too, but that was an accident. The same publisher puts out gourmet and Bon Appetit, and I got confused when ordering my subscription. However, for $24 USD for 2 years, it's worth it to have a little fanciness.

Anyway, the recipe called for a food processor, I have no idea why, but of course I just used my hands. Who mixes salt, sugar and flour with a food processor?

The yeast came in a 100-gram block, about the size of half a deck of cards. I put half the brick in some hot tap water, about 110 degrees, and mushed it and stirred it a little then let it dissolve while I mixed the dry stuff. I started with 2 cups of flour, one teaspoon salt and one teaspoon sugar. I added 3 tablespoons olive oil. I mushed/dissolved the last bit of yeast, and started adding the mixture. It became quickly apparent that I had WAY too much liquid for the dough, and I ended up adding about another cup of flour, but didn't change any of the other ingredients.

And then the magic happened. I swear the dough started to rise while I was kneading it. J didn't feel like kneading right then, having been mesmerized by BBC children's TV. I worked the dough for about 5 minutes, and then set in a glass bowl. The bowl was speared in olive oil, and I pout a plastic bag smeared with oil over top of it. You can use plastic wrap, of course, but I like to recycle.

At home I have a special ceramic bowl from my mother-in-law that I use. I usually set the bowl in the sink in some warm water, but I was pretty sure I didn't need the extra rising help.

This thing grew massive. After half an hour, I had to take it out and put it in my roasting pan to give it more room. It was crazy. 30 minutes later, it had at least tripled in size, so we punched it down, J's favorite part, and wrapped in the oil-smeared bag. Then we put it in a plastic box with a lid, although not an airtight one, and put it in the fridge. When I opened the fridge a little later, it was STILL rising, and had popped the lid off the box. I continued to punch it throughout the day to keep it from taking over the kitchen.

I took a few pieces off and cooked them, just to see if it could work, and while they didn’t taste like anything to me, they rose in the oven, and seemed promising.

At about 6 pm, we took the dough out of the fridge, and unwrapped it on the counter. We split it in half, and J helped me roll it out. This was after "driving" the rolling pin all over the floor for ten minutes, chasing me with the steamroller. I guess I should have washed it off. Oops.

I realized there was no way H would have the time or energy to prepare another pizza with the leftover dough, so I told one of his coworkers to preheat their oven so we could make two.

We rolled out the dough pretty thin, then put it on an oiled piece of aluminum foil on the thick oven tray. J poked most o the holes in the crust with a fork, and spread around the sauce. Instead of making the sauce, like I planned, I experimented with a canned sauce by an Italian company called Muzzi. It was great. Not too salty, not too garlicky. J sprinkled the cheese from a bag labeled "pizza cheese". H had used this product to improve frozen pizzas before, and found it acceptable.

We put "Vikingas" salami on it, and added a few sprinkles of Parmesan to the top. Then into the oven it went. I thin it was at about 200C, but our oven is so wacky here, who really knows? It took about 12 minutes to cook, and was wonderful. H said, "You made real pizza!" He was pretty happy.

I let J eat some, and luckily he didn't want to eat eight pieces, so hopefully he'll be able to process it ok. He had a cheese stick two days ago, and I haven’t seen a reaction from that yet. He also seems OK with Parmesan and sometimes cheddar. We'll see.

The co-worker put olives and onions on his, and had to stick it back in our oven to cook it a little more, just to crispy up the crust. He had grated mozzarella on it, and added garlic too. I liked ours better, but everyone was happy.

This went so well, that I think I prefer it to frozen pizza. We usually get Freschetta Brick Oven at home, but this really didn't take that much longer to make. And it's about a million times healthier, with no additives and whatnot. I also didn't get that "too salty" feeling that I usually get from pizza.

Here's to a homemade pizza that tastes good. Huzzah!
Thanks for reading,
-Anne

Roast beef - I think

I continue to use my undependable oven, and it continues to amaze me.

Last night J and I had some ghetto minestrone, basically tomato soup with pasta and a can of corn thrown in. The tomato soup was awful, and so the whole meal was ruined. He ate some of it, but I only had two bites. Luckily, I knew I was trying roast beef, again, for H later.

It seems the oven is just completely lying about the temperature, so I put it at 225C, hoping that would do the trick. It cooked for about an hour, and there was enough edible parts t it for both H and I to have dinner, along with sandwich leftovers. I didn't even try to do anything with it, just put olive oil in the pan, and sprinkled salt on it. I added some tiny potatoes around the edges. These soaked in a little olive oil and salt, unpeeled and uncut, for about 15 minutes before I put them in the pan. Everything turned out ok.

Be careful when prepping roast vegetables, as too much olive oil will make your food soggy, not crispy. I use the olive oil and salt combo for almost every vegetable I roast. Carrots, potatoes, sweet potato "fries."

Oh! I found sweet potatoes! There were only five of them, but I bought two for my last week here. I am so excited. I am making fries with them tonight.

We're supposed to go to the Ambassador's house again, but I'm not sure if I'm up to it. I'd have to go to the bank machine for cab money, J has been saying his tummy hurts, and it's all crappy and I don't want to. Plus, I know we'll be stuck inside, which doesn't usually work out too well for me, as I'm never sure what to do with myself. Clearly I'm looking for excuses.

Also, we made friends with a Bulgarian family 2 doors down in the hotel, and they have three little boys, and I don't have to get cab fare. I'm so awful and disloyal.

This post is full of random disconnected thoughts. I tried to post yesterday, but it was even more scattered than this one. It's just not in me today, and I apologize.

I made some undercooked beets the other day, but they worked wonderfully as stamps for J. He made a beet and blueberry piece. Lots of fun with food. I was afraid it would start to smell rotten if I kept it, but my mother in law says she used to use veggies at the Montessori preschool for art and it was never a problem.

I am always proud of myself when I can reuse things for art, like cardboard tubes (we made a forest!) or colorful plastic bags and sticks (streamers!). J is so swamped with toys, that I worry about his ability to imagine things will go away. He seems OK so far, though.

I will stop torturing you with bad writing now. Thanks for slogging through.
-Anne