Well it’s official: Owen’s constipated. After wondering aloud for a day or two about just how transformed Owen’s poops were becoming, a little TOO solid it seemed, he’s started passing pebbles of poop (four of them today and straining with each one). I’ll spare you any photos.
So you can scratch my little plan to focus on vegetables, then fruits. I’ve learned since doing more research that carrots and sweet potatoes – Owen’s two first vegetables – are starchy culprits in constipation for some babies. And that butternut squash I was getting ready to cook, puree and freeze in ice cube trays for the next vegetable? It’s on the list too.
Isn’t it lovely how we’re told to start babies off on the BRAT diet (bananas, rice ceral, apples – and well, I guess the toast comes later) when those are the very things that constipate a baby. (Luckily we hadn’t made it to bananas or applesauce yet).
So Owen’s eating pureed prunes for breakfast and baby oatmeal for dinner – and slurping up a wee bit of apple juice diluted in water for now. Then comes the karo syrup, recommended by the nurse at our pediatrician’s office, if I can’t get things going smoothly without it.
Hopefully his little body will start learning how to process all this strange gook soon.
To be honest, I’m kind of missing exclusive breastfeeding. Owen’s diet was so simple then.
If you’ve got a favorite constipation remedy for babies, please share.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Plane bedfellows
Some kids cuddle with teddy bears. Will prefers....
metal airplanes.
My best convince-the-kid-to-take-a-nap strategy is to graciously offer to fetch just about anything in the house for him to read or play with on his bed until he gets tired. Sometimes it's all the mouse books and dog books I can find. Sometimes it's a few toy airplanes -- and a person to go in the little old-school one. (Today, when I brought a female little person for the green plane, Will started to protest that he needed a man, but I soon convinced him that women can be pilots too.)
So, what strange things have your kids been known to cuddle with? One-word answers are welcome here.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Meet the orchestra
Yesterday Will and I went to the RiverCenter for a family concert – the Columbus Symphony Orchestra performed Lemony Snicket’s “The Composer is Dead” -- after we lucked up on some last-minute tickets. It was such a wonderful introduction to the orchestra for Will that I plan to make an annual event of it. The concert itself was a fun mystery-musical tour through the different sections and instruments of the orchestra, with a lively storyteller guiding the way and throwing in plenty of humor for the adults. And the prelude to it all was equally fun. The kids got their faces painted (here are Creight, Mary Margaret and Will as tiger, butterfly and dog, complete with permanently-hanging-out tongue).
And then they explored the instrument “petting zoo”
Here’s one “zoo keeper” letting Will try his hand at the violin
And another assisting him with the cello.
There were bells to play
And some up-close musical introductions to several brass-playing musicians. Here Will and a handful of kids meet the French horn.
The whole afternoon made me giddy just thinking about all the concerts and plays we’ll be able to take Will and Owen to as they get older and we feel less and less confined to places where babies and toddlers can be themselves -- as in: cry, run around, wreak havoc. (Until now, we've been limiting ourselves to outdoor concerts where Will can run around, dance and talk and laugh at full volume.)
Meanwhile Will has been reflecting on his favorite instruments – he especially liked “the big one and the other big one,” which we determined after some discussion were the saxophone and the trombone.
And then they explored the instrument “petting zoo”
Here’s one “zoo keeper” letting Will try his hand at the violin
And another assisting him with the cello.
There were bells to play
And some up-close musical introductions to several brass-playing musicians. Here Will and a handful of kids meet the French horn.
The whole afternoon made me giddy just thinking about all the concerts and plays we’ll be able to take Will and Owen to as they get older and we feel less and less confined to places where babies and toddlers can be themselves -- as in: cry, run around, wreak havoc. (Until now, we've been limiting ourselves to outdoor concerts where Will can run around, dance and talk and laugh at full volume.)
Meanwhile Will has been reflecting on his favorite instruments – he especially liked “the big one and the other big one,” which we determined after some discussion were the saxophone and the trombone.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Fats and fertility
Rob and I decided a while back to retire from the baby-making business. We’re content with our cozy family of four. But for all of you out there who are still interested in getting pregnant – or who have friends who are struggling on that point, here is an article worth reading. Granted I’m a month and a half late sharing it and some of you probably already read it, but I didn’t get to it until this week.
It was the December 6 Newsweek cover story, which reviewed a bunch of the key findings presented in The Fertility Diet, a Harvard Medical Book that offers strategies for increasing your fertility odds simply by eating healthfully -- based on data from 18,000 women who took part in a long-term research project called the Nurse’s Health Study (which examined how diet and other factors affected a broad range of chronic conditions including heart disease and cancer). So there’s implications for how to stay healthy for those of us not personally vested in fertility probabilities anymore.
And for the thousands of women who consider fertility treatment every year, it would be nice to know that just some basic dietary manipulations might solve the problem naturally. Of course it’s not a panacea. The recommendations are aimed at preventing and reversing ovulatory infertility, which they say accounts for one quarter or more of all cases of infertility. And I’m sure there are plenty of causes of ovulatory infertility that are beyond the realm of a dietary fix.
One interesting finding though: “The more low-fat dairy products in a woman's diet, the more likely she was to have had trouble getting pregnant. The more full-fat dairy products in a woman's diet, the less likely she was to have had problems getting pregnant.” The authors don’t recommend consuming pints of ice cream at a time. They say “aim for one to two servings of dairy products a day, both of them full fat.” And they advise switching back to lowfat once you’re no longer pregnant. But I wonder about the broader implications for how whole fats consumed in moderation might be generally healthier for our bodies than they are generally given credit for.
(We’re still drinking whole milk and eating butter in moderation in our house after my interview with Sally Fallon of the Weston A. Price Foundation. I don't know if we’ve chosen the right path, but we’re at least enjoying the flavors. If you're interested in the whole saturated-fat-as-good-or-evil debate, this is another very interesting and fairly comprehensive article on the subject -- entitled "What if bad fat isn't so bad?" -- at msnbc.com.)
Highlights of the strategies outlined in "The Fertility Diet," according to the Web site for the book, include:
*Avoiding trans-fats, the artery-clogging fats found in many commercial products and fast foods
*Eating more vegetable protein, like beans and nuts, and less animal protein
*Drinking a glass of whole milk or having a small dish of ice cream or full-fat yogurt every day; temporarily trading in skim milk and low or no-fat dairy products for their full-fat versions
*Getting into the "fertility zones" for weight and physical activity.
It was the December 6 Newsweek cover story, which reviewed a bunch of the key findings presented in The Fertility Diet, a Harvard Medical Book that offers strategies for increasing your fertility odds simply by eating healthfully -- based on data from 18,000 women who took part in a long-term research project called the Nurse’s Health Study (which examined how diet and other factors affected a broad range of chronic conditions including heart disease and cancer). So there’s implications for how to stay healthy for those of us not personally vested in fertility probabilities anymore.
And for the thousands of women who consider fertility treatment every year, it would be nice to know that just some basic dietary manipulations might solve the problem naturally. Of course it’s not a panacea. The recommendations are aimed at preventing and reversing ovulatory infertility, which they say accounts for one quarter or more of all cases of infertility. And I’m sure there are plenty of causes of ovulatory infertility that are beyond the realm of a dietary fix.
One interesting finding though: “The more low-fat dairy products in a woman's diet, the more likely she was to have had trouble getting pregnant. The more full-fat dairy products in a woman's diet, the less likely she was to have had problems getting pregnant.” The authors don’t recommend consuming pints of ice cream at a time. They say “aim for one to two servings of dairy products a day, both of them full fat.” And they advise switching back to lowfat once you’re no longer pregnant. But I wonder about the broader implications for how whole fats consumed in moderation might be generally healthier for our bodies than they are generally given credit for.
(We’re still drinking whole milk and eating butter in moderation in our house after my interview with Sally Fallon of the Weston A. Price Foundation. I don't know if we’ve chosen the right path, but we’re at least enjoying the flavors. If you're interested in the whole saturated-fat-as-good-or-evil debate, this is another very interesting and fairly comprehensive article on the subject -- entitled "What if bad fat isn't so bad?" -- at msnbc.com.)
Highlights of the strategies outlined in "The Fertility Diet," according to the Web site for the book, include:
*Avoiding trans-fats, the artery-clogging fats found in many commercial products and fast foods
*Eating more vegetable protein, like beans and nuts, and less animal protein
*Drinking a glass of whole milk or having a small dish of ice cream or full-fat yogurt every day; temporarily trading in skim milk and low or no-fat dairy products for their full-fat versions
*Getting into the "fertility zones" for weight and physical activity.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Homemade play-dough
Yesterday we retired a big plastic back of jumbled up, slightly dried out store bought play-dough that had begun to look like a bag of multicolored peas – and made some new from scratch.
We used this recipe from Super Baby Food, a book I’ve been referring to occasionally as I make some of Owen’s baby food from scratch (more on that later).
Ingredients:
2+ cups white flour
½ cup salt
1 cup hot tap water
1 teaspoon cooking oil
In large bowl, mix flour and salt. Slowly mix in water and oil while stirring, then knead in the bowl. You may have to add extra flour (up to a ½ cup or more) until the stickiness disappears. Divide into three balls.
To color the dough poke a deep hole with your finger into the top of the dough ball and place color in. We used washable tempera paint in red, yellow and blue (1/2 teaspoon or so per ball) but food coloring is another option. Knead color into dough.
To store, put each color in a fold-top sandwich bag and then place the bags together in a Ziplock.
It was so simple that Will did most of the work preparing it and then played for well over an hour with his new, wonderfully pliable dough. Building snowmen, cooking pancakes, making footprints in the dough. And on and on.
We used this recipe from Super Baby Food, a book I’ve been referring to occasionally as I make some of Owen’s baby food from scratch (more on that later).
Ingredients:
2+ cups white flour
½ cup salt
1 cup hot tap water
1 teaspoon cooking oil
In large bowl, mix flour and salt. Slowly mix in water and oil while stirring, then knead in the bowl. You may have to add extra flour (up to a ½ cup or more) until the stickiness disappears. Divide into three balls.
To color the dough poke a deep hole with your finger into the top of the dough ball and place color in. We used washable tempera paint in red, yellow and blue (1/2 teaspoon or so per ball) but food coloring is another option. Knead color into dough.
To store, put each color in a fold-top sandwich bag and then place the bags together in a Ziplock.
It was so simple that Will did most of the work preparing it and then played for well over an hour with his new, wonderfully pliable dough. Building snowmen, cooking pancakes, making footprints in the dough. And on and on.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Dinner planning on the Scramble
For a couple weeks now I’ve been trying out dinner planning, Six O’Clock Scramble style (the healthy, family-friendly dinner planning service and cookbook I first mentioned on January 7). First I tried out a week’s worth of menus from the online service for free. And once I realized how much I was enjoying this new approach for simple but healthy cooking, organized grocery shopping and the opportunity to let my family’s tired taste buds try out a new meal every single night, I decided to do a story for the Ledger-Enquirer’s Taste section, which you can read here. It includes an interview with Scramble mastermind Aviva Goldfarb, who’s made it her mission in life to discover recipes that are healthy, kid-palatable and relatively simple to execute.
I’m no artist in the kitchen, and since I rely on recipes anyway, the Scramble has been a nice way to mix things up and try out a lot of new meals without worrying that Will might snub the stuff. So far, we’ve all eaten hearty portions of every Scramble meal I’ve made. (I’ll admit here that Will is probably a less finicky eater than your average toddler.) Rob says he might not want to have the New Year’s Gumbo again but it was fine once. And I’ll admit that I didn’t like Chips Ole’ quite as much as Will (he was THRILLED to get to dip blue corn tortilla chips into meat sauce – we used ground turkey -- and call it dinner). But for the most part, everything’s getting rave reviews. Many of the recipes do rely on canned beans or canned tomatoes to keep things manageable in terms of time and cost, but there’s also a lot of fresh produce and whole grains in the mix. Most of the time, I made the suggested sides too (or my own variation on them), and we wound up eating a wider variety of vegetables for that reason. Here’s some of the Scramble menus (minus all the side dishes) that we’ve eaten over the past couple weeks:
From the sample online newsletter (you can view these five recipes here):
Goddess Chicken with Artichokes
Ginger Shrimp (Chicken or Tofu) and Broccoli Stir-fry (We chose tofu, even though we try not to eat very much of it these days),
Tortellini Soup with Spinach and Tomatoes
Chips Ole
New Years Good Luck Gumbo
From the winter section of the cookbook:
Chicken Diablo
Flounder with Lemony Bread Crumb Topping
Quesadillas with spinach and onions
Split Pea Soup with a Touch of Curry
Lentil and Cheese Casserole (Vegetarian meatloaf)
Pumpkin black bean soup
Tonight we’ll be trying a honey-baked salmon (stolen from the summer section of the cookbook, when I realized I’d forgotten to get lime for the “Wild Salmon or Arctic Char with Chili-Lime Spice Rub” in the winter section).
You can view a couple of Aviva’s favorite Scramble recipes at the end of the online story. And she gave me permission to share a couple of my favorites so far from the cookbook. I’m not going to include recipes for the suggested side dishes, but they are in the cookbook.
Chicken Diablo (Prep 15 minutes; Cook 50 minutes)
4 Tablespoons butter
¼ cup Dijon mustard
½ cup honey
1 tsp curry powder
1 whole chicken, cut up (or 8-12 chicken pieces of your choice) (I cut up a whole chicken and made chicken stock with the left-over carcass and wings to use in later meals. Obviously this turns it into less of a quick scramble recipe, but the payoff of a batch of homemade chicken stock was worth it for me.)
Preheat the oven to 350. In a small saucepan, melt the butter over medium-low heat. Add the mustard, honey, and curry powder and continue cooking and stirring until the sauce is well mixed, about 2 minutes.
Arrange the chicken pieces in a large baking pan. Pour the sauce over the chicken. (At this point you can refrigerate the chicken and sauce for up to 24 hours or bake it right away.)
Bake the chicken for 50 minutes. Halfway through, turn the chicken over and baste it with the sauce. For browner tops, put the chicken under the boriler for the final 5 minutes of cooking.
Recommended side dish: Lemon-pepper asparagus
Flounder with Lemony Bread Crumb Topping (Even Rob, who just doesn’t like fish much, admitted he enjoyed this meal. The fresh lemon and fresh parsley are a must, I think.)
2 flounder fillets (about 1 to 1½ pounds total)
1/3 cup bread crumbs
1 Tablespoon olive oil
¼ cup chopped fresh parsely
2 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice (about ½ lemon), plus additional for serving
½ teaspoon minced garlic (about 1 clove)
¼ teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Coat a baking sheet with aluminum foil and spray the top of the foil with nonstick cooking spray. Lay the fish fillets on the baking sheet. In a medium bowl, combine the bread crumbs, oil, parsley, lemon juice, garlic, salt and mustard and mix them together well with a fork. Press an equal amount of the bread crumb mixture onto the top of each fillet.
Bake the fish until it is white and flakes easily in the center, about 10 minutes. For a browner topping, broil it for the final 2 minutes of cooking. Sprinkle the fish with additional lemon juice before serving if desired.
Recommended side dish: Asian Rice Pilaf
I haven’t been a Scramble purist quite. When one week’s menu called for a Greek penne pasta with kalamata olives, for example, (one of the few things Rob just plain refuses to eat is olives) I substituted with a chickpea pasta recipe that my friend Ginny recently shared with me. It was easy and delicious, so I’ll share it soon when it won’t get confused with the Scramble fare.
I’m no artist in the kitchen, and since I rely on recipes anyway, the Scramble has been a nice way to mix things up and try out a lot of new meals without worrying that Will might snub the stuff. So far, we’ve all eaten hearty portions of every Scramble meal I’ve made. (I’ll admit here that Will is probably a less finicky eater than your average toddler.) Rob says he might not want to have the New Year’s Gumbo again but it was fine once. And I’ll admit that I didn’t like Chips Ole’ quite as much as Will (he was THRILLED to get to dip blue corn tortilla chips into meat sauce – we used ground turkey -- and call it dinner). But for the most part, everything’s getting rave reviews. Many of the recipes do rely on canned beans or canned tomatoes to keep things manageable in terms of time and cost, but there’s also a lot of fresh produce and whole grains in the mix. Most of the time, I made the suggested sides too (or my own variation on them), and we wound up eating a wider variety of vegetables for that reason. Here’s some of the Scramble menus (minus all the side dishes) that we’ve eaten over the past couple weeks:
From the sample online newsletter (you can view these five recipes here):
Goddess Chicken with Artichokes
Ginger Shrimp (Chicken or Tofu) and Broccoli Stir-fry (We chose tofu, even though we try not to eat very much of it these days),
Tortellini Soup with Spinach and Tomatoes
Chips Ole
New Years Good Luck Gumbo
From the winter section of the cookbook:
Chicken Diablo
Flounder with Lemony Bread Crumb Topping
Quesadillas with spinach and onions
Split Pea Soup with a Touch of Curry
Lentil and Cheese Casserole (Vegetarian meatloaf)
Pumpkin black bean soup
Tonight we’ll be trying a honey-baked salmon (stolen from the summer section of the cookbook, when I realized I’d forgotten to get lime for the “Wild Salmon or Arctic Char with Chili-Lime Spice Rub” in the winter section).
You can view a couple of Aviva’s favorite Scramble recipes at the end of the online story. And she gave me permission to share a couple of my favorites so far from the cookbook. I’m not going to include recipes for the suggested side dishes, but they are in the cookbook.
Chicken Diablo (Prep 15 minutes; Cook 50 minutes)
4 Tablespoons butter
¼ cup Dijon mustard
½ cup honey
1 tsp curry powder
1 whole chicken, cut up (or 8-12 chicken pieces of your choice) (I cut up a whole chicken and made chicken stock with the left-over carcass and wings to use in later meals. Obviously this turns it into less of a quick scramble recipe, but the payoff of a batch of homemade chicken stock was worth it for me.)
Preheat the oven to 350. In a small saucepan, melt the butter over medium-low heat. Add the mustard, honey, and curry powder and continue cooking and stirring until the sauce is well mixed, about 2 minutes.
Arrange the chicken pieces in a large baking pan. Pour the sauce over the chicken. (At this point you can refrigerate the chicken and sauce for up to 24 hours or bake it right away.)
Bake the chicken for 50 minutes. Halfway through, turn the chicken over and baste it with the sauce. For browner tops, put the chicken under the boriler for the final 5 minutes of cooking.
Recommended side dish: Lemon-pepper asparagus
Flounder with Lemony Bread Crumb Topping (Even Rob, who just doesn’t like fish much, admitted he enjoyed this meal. The fresh lemon and fresh parsley are a must, I think.)
2 flounder fillets (about 1 to 1½ pounds total)
1/3 cup bread crumbs
1 Tablespoon olive oil
¼ cup chopped fresh parsely
2 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice (about ½ lemon), plus additional for serving
½ teaspoon minced garlic (about 1 clove)
¼ teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Coat a baking sheet with aluminum foil and spray the top of the foil with nonstick cooking spray. Lay the fish fillets on the baking sheet. In a medium bowl, combine the bread crumbs, oil, parsley, lemon juice, garlic, salt and mustard and mix them together well with a fork. Press an equal amount of the bread crumb mixture onto the top of each fillet.
Bake the fish until it is white and flakes easily in the center, about 10 minutes. For a browner topping, broil it for the final 2 minutes of cooking. Sprinkle the fish with additional lemon juice before serving if desired.
Recommended side dish: Asian Rice Pilaf
I haven’t been a Scramble purist quite. When one week’s menu called for a Greek penne pasta with kalamata olives, for example, (one of the few things Rob just plain refuses to eat is olives) I substituted with a chickpea pasta recipe that my friend Ginny recently shared with me. It was easy and delicious, so I’ll share it soon when it won’t get confused with the Scramble fare.
Monday, January 21, 2008
Helmet-wearing carnivore
Will enters the kitchen with his red bike helmet on and explains that he’s got to wear his helmet because he’s going to eat some meat. (This is fantasy meat, it was after-breakfast playtime with no real meat-eating in sight.) 
He apparently learned the importance of being a helmet-wearing carnivore the hard way: “Yeah ‘cause one time I got sick ‘cause I ate meat with not a helmet,” he tells me.
And it took some thinking on my part before it occurred to me that a couple days earlier I’d been telling Will the story of how we discovered Rob had a red meat allergy – when he broke out in hives and had trouble breathing after eating a hamburger one time, a steak another.
So I guess it makes sense that Will has deduced that meat-eating is a dangerous contact sport. Some of my vegetarian friends might agree.
He apparently learned the importance of being a helmet-wearing carnivore the hard way: “Yeah ‘cause one time I got sick ‘cause I ate meat with not a helmet,” he tells me.
And it took some thinking on my part before it occurred to me that a couple days earlier I’d been telling Will the story of how we discovered Rob had a red meat allergy – when he broke out in hives and had trouble breathing after eating a hamburger one time, a steak another.
So I guess it makes sense that Will has deduced that meat-eating is a dangerous contact sport. Some of my vegetarian friends might agree.
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