food! glorious food!

okay, so i have a new finger food for you all to try - "snapea crisps" by calbee snack salad. madelyn likes them (as you can see) and i think that they are really good too. i heard about them through a mommasource bulletin board (thanks, kellie) as a finger food idea. we bought them at a health food store, but it sounded like they are carried by normal grocery stores too. they are sort of the consistency of the more common gerber stars or wagon wheels snacks but are meant to be a snack food or salad topping. all i know is that i am not a huge fan of peas and these are really good (well i might be a little over enthusiastic, but when you think about a crunchy peapod i don't think that the expectation is very high for taste).

plus we dropped like $70 on food for maddie today (organics sure are price-y)! among the new foods - kale, eggplant, veggie dogs (read "hot dogs"), and cauliflower. i am just trying to make sure that she gets more veggies and variety in her finger foods. she is at least letting me give her more foods on a spoon again. i am really thankful that was a short phase.

she also had her first sandwich tonight - turkey and swiss on a whole wheat bread. okay - so she didn't eat it in the traditional fashion. each piece was eaten individually, but it was fun to make her a little sandwich! tomorrow i am going to start new recipes for "toddler hors d'oeuvres". i will let you know how it goes. i am starting with a cream cheese ball rolled in ground seeds (and, yes, i might be a little nuts!).

i thought that this video was worth sharing. not only is it cute because she is laughing so hard, but she isn't even watching what matt is doing. she is just laughing at the noise while she keeps right on playing.

lastly, this is the best picture we got today of her walking with only a little support. matt was cleaning out the garage and maddie and i were enjoying the warmer (60), breezy day. her pants are really capris, but she is just too skinny to keep them up (not from a lack of eating though!). she is still getting used to walking with shoes on. she definitely prefers to be barefoot.

good night. love.

tahini tongue

i am getting tired of winter. really tired. so this afternoon maddie wore a summer dress. we need to work on 'pretending' right? dresses, however, are the worst type of clothing for crawlers. to keep maddie movin' i tucked her dress into the front of her bloomers.

tomorrow we are definitely getting out of this house. maddie and i both need some fresh air (okay, so more than likely we will not really get any fresh air, but we can get some different air). now i just have to figure out where we are going... i am going to try and go somewhere besides the mall.

for her afternoon snack i decided to just give her the bowl to hold and eat her fruit and cheese right out of it. she did a lot better than i thought that she would. as you can see she was able to hold the bowl and take the fruit out.

she has rediscovered her tongue this week, but has moved beyond blowing razz sounds. now she licks her bottom lip, sticks it in and out kind of like a lizard but not as quickly (if that makes any sense). my camera battery died so i couldn't get a video today so hopefully she will still be amused by her tongue tomorrow and i can try to show you what i mean. it makes it more difficult to feed her at meals because after the first few bites she just wants to stick her tongue out all the way and that makes getting the spoon in a lot more challenging.

our new food was not kiwi (i actually forgot while preparing her lunch quickly between meetings), but tahini. for those of you not in the know, tahini it is a nut butter made from sesame seeds. i must say that it is not something that i would ever enjoy eating (to put it nicely). madelyn ate it with her yogurt with only one face with the first bite.

her balance improves more and more each day. and she is starting to realize it. she has figured out that if she lets go she won't fall any more, but that she can sit herself down at her own control.

love.

mouth talk

today's post is about madelyn's mouth - what it does and what goes in it lately. as you may have guessed everything goes in her mouth! today she even started biting her own arm at breakfast. i didn't realize that she was actually biting herself until i noticed the red teeth marks later in the day. i thought she was just 'mouthing' or sucking on her wrist because it had a little porridge. (i checked - this is perfectly normal in a teething baby.) she is just trying to get some relief for the pain of her molars coming in.

one of the other ways she has been finding relief is by grinding her teeth. it gives me the heebie-jeebies! but i try not to react too much. this is her teeth grinding face pictured here. at least she doesn't do it in her sleep. apparently that is when it becomes worrisome otherwise it is normal.

today i added kelp powder to her morning porridge and she ate the whole thing right up. i didn't try any myself, but maybe later in the week i will give it a try. i also made her a new finger food for her afternoon snack - mozzarella cheese. in addition to the cheese she had mango and cantaloupe pieces. she really loves feeding herself. she gets so excited and seems to enjoy the 'experience' more. and all the finger foods make her want to hold the spoon more without my help. i don't mind the extra time or the mess, but the really runny purees don't always make it to her mouth.

the next new food will be kiwi. (did you know that you can freeze kiwi, cantaloupe and other vitamin c fruits submerged in orange juice? the juice keeps the fruit from loosing its vitamin c. crazy, right? supposedly the texture is a little mushier when you defrost it but it keeps in the freezer for 10 months. more than you ever wanted to know - sorry - i was excited.)

the closing maddie story - she thinks "eskimo kisses" are funny. if you say "eskimo kisses" and rub noses with her she will hold still and giggle. so sweet. love.

tofu is torrific!

the tofu was a huge hit today! for any of you using finger foods i highly recommend firm tofu. maddie gobbled it up and it was a lot easier to pick-up than the fruit pieces. plus, it can be mixed in with other foods for some extra protein pre-meats.

i forgot to mention yesterday that madelyn has another new desire - to crawl up and over anything in her way. besides just reaching up as high as she can to grab things she is starting to put her feet into the act too. she has been trying to climb up and over one of her toys by stepping up with one of her feet.

today she has started standing all by herself for 1 - 2 seconds and she can take one or two steps while holding on to my finger with one hand for balance. she still has a long way to go for actual walking but we are starting to see signs of it.

today at playgroup she enjoyed chasing around one of their little dogs. she just kept laughing at it and crawling after it. at least that was what she was doing when she wasn't trying to climb over the other babies! she is getting so fast that i can't really carry on a conversation because i have to stay on top of her the whole time. fun, fun, fun!

love.

new games

madelyn and i had some fun today playing a new game. i crawl around the house and she follows me. i would crawl around the couch and down the hall to her room, etc. and she would crawl after me laughing. sometimes she would sit up to see where i was and then would start laughing when she saw me and take off again. i can't wait for her to play this new game with her daddy!

here is a video of our second new game of the day - dropping a beach ball on her belly. for some reason this was hysterical to her and i filmed it because she was snorting when she laughed.



her new trick of the day is that she can get herself back down after she pulls up on something. it takes her a few tries, but she doesn't need me to help her down any more and she doesn't fall to hit her face. i am so proud of her for being such a 'big girl'!



she also started making repetitive "b" sounds last night. i wonder what word she will say next...

just to give you an idea for what a wiggle worm she is, today she sat down from standing and when she came right back up she had somehow gotten her arm out of her sleeve in less than two seconds! and then she sat back down to play again.

on the foods front tomorrow we start tofu as a finger food. the egg yolks have gone over great - she gobbled up her oatmeal/millet porridge this morning when i mixed in the hard boiled yolk and avocado (sounds disgusting, right?). it was almost a full cup worth of food!

i can't wait to see what new things she will have for me tomorrow! love.

sitting up captured

since i didn't post any pictures about madelyn last night, i thought that i would go ahead and post some videos this morning. this is not the greatest video of her trying the banana puffs for the first time last night, but she smiles in the beginning and you can see some of her three top teeth. she is eating one of the puffs and holding another in her hand. we tried them again this morning while i was getting her oatmeal ready and she ate all three by herself - using her pointer finger and thumb. i was so proud!



and then this video is from this morning. she kept crawling and sitting herself up and it occurred to me to grab the camera and catch this sit-up before she got too cranky to play any more and we had to move on to breakfast.



she crawled to me for the first time this morning as an extremely intentional action and she stayed on all fours the whole way (normally she drops to her belly at least once) - she covered about three feet. i was so excited! i told her to come to mommy and she did!

that's all for now. love.