Our Story

Since starting Dahlia on solid food, I have been struggling with so many details: how much should I feed, how often, what kinds, how fast to introduce new foods, how long should I wait to introduce ‘potentially allergic foods’ like wheat, cow milk, peanuts, etc., should she get water, should I feed only organic, should I make it or buy it, and what about fingerfoods???

I know this will surprise most of my audience, but there are very strong opinions for each and every one of these topics. I have personally been pretty heavily indoctrinated that breastmilk is ALL a baby needs for the first year, and solid food experiences are basically just a developmental activity, not a nutritional necessity. However, there are still a lot of people out there clamoring for my parenting ear. They are saying things like, “Your baby needs extra water now that they are eating solids.”, “Your baby should be getting cereal at this point (6 months).”, “Your baby needs more energy now that they are crawling, so feed more solids.”. And even beyond these directives, I have the influential example of a lot of the women around me. Some women I know feed their babies pretty much anything at this age, both in baby food and in fingerfood. Others very carefully introduce every little ingredient and wait days in between each food.

Deciding about fingerfoods is an extra struggle. Dahlia watches everything that we eat with those large, cute blue eyes, and sometimes even begs for it with her hands or open mouth. What makes these decisions so hard are that most of what we eat, I consider a choking hazard. I feel like I should help her develop hand-eye coordination and chewing by offering fingerfoods, but I am pretty stumped on what to offer. Cheerios seemed like the most obvious food until I found out that the second ingredient is sugar! Soft foods like banana and pieces of fruit are impossible for her to pick up at this point, so she just mushes them around and pushes them off the tray/table. (Although there was one moment of brilliance where I marveled at my daughter’s apparent genius: my 7 month old baby, getting frustrated with not being able to pick up mushy pear pieces, pushed the piece to the edge of the table and then ate it off the edge of the table with her mouth!! I was astounded.) It seems like each time I go to the store, I come back with a different “healthy” brand of O’s cereal. One was impossible for her to gum into a soft enough food–she worked at it for minutes before she spat out a half dissolved O. One had wheat starch (wheat!!!), and one had cane sugar (are all sugars equal?). So we finally settled on Purely O’s by Cascadian Farms. It has wheat starch, so Dahlia is starting early on wheat, but it doesn’t have any sugar, and I think the wheat starch is what allows them to dissolve so easily in her mouth.

So, like every other issue, I guess I have come to the point where I just need to decide what seems best for my little family and go ahead with that. I think a lot of the opinions floating around are perpetuated by the baby food manufacturers. I don’t like getting purposely skewed parenting advice so that I will buy more of someone’s product. My suspicions tend to lead me back toward the “breastmilk as the staple and solid food as a developmental activity” camp.

Basically, I am trying not to be completely overbearing in how fast I introduce new foods, but also go slow enough so that I can catch any problems if she reacts to a food. She is getting better at gumming fingerfoods, so our options there will start to open up. I have given up on the completely organic route, but still buy organic for her when I can. I make her baby food, and offer her bites (or hold it for her to suck on) of anything we are eating that is appropriate for her. I am not militaristic about our food regime, but I try to get 2 feedings in. It is usually prunes or fruit in the AM (to avoid adventures in constipation), and veggies and cereal in the PM. She is fast approaching a year old anyway, so I think food will become less of a struggle. I am going to try to avoid processed sugar as long as I can, but it may be a losing battle.

So there you have it. Maybe I think too hard about these things. It is the blessing and the curse of living in this information age. Next edition: Adventures in the Childhood Vaccine Controversy.

Our baby’s got mad skills. (“Kneebouncers”:http://www.kneebouncers.com?)

Dear Dahlia,

Wow, this month has just flown by, and all of a sudden you are 7 months old! We have been so busy that it seems like you just turned 6 months old. Well, let’s see what happened this month:

We did a LOT of travel. We drove up to Boston and back in one weekend (that was almost 13 hours of travel in 38 hours). You took your first airplane flight down to see Aunt Jaime and Uncle Sal get married. You did so well on the flight that strangers were complimenting us on how well-behaved you were. You were able to fall asleep while nursing on the flight. It has been so long since you did that in public, and it was really special and sweet for me. Since we didn’t have a babysitter down there, you had to stay up past your bedtime a few nights for the rehearsal and the wedding. You were so good and took it all in stride. No breaking down and screaming. You even got out on the dance floor with us and rocked out a bit. I think I learned a lot about your flexibility this month. I thought that you absolutely needed a schedule for sleeping, but maybe I’m the one that needed the schedule more than you! I still feel that you need an early bedtime and naps, but I am feeling much less structured about the naps, and not as guilty when you have a late night here and there.

Your are eating a lot more grown up food lately too! So far, you have had carrots, pears, green beans, peas, blueberries, apples, bananas, cantaloupe, sweet potatoes, oatmeal, rice cereal, a piece of dried mango to chew on, and some avocado to mash with your fingers. That is quite a variety, and it will just keep getting better, believe me! I feel so honored that I get to introduce you to food. It is a wonderful, yet dangerous thing in our culture of excess. It can be especially hard to have a proper relationship with food, growing up as an American girl. I hope I can teach you how to enjoy healthy food habits from the very beginning. I am also learning a lot about our eating habits as I work toward that goal for you. For example, I know that you will be eating mostly what we eat in a few months, so I have to be serving us meals that you can eat! And if you can’t eat it, I have to be asking myself, why would I eat it? Tonight, I whipped up a batch of zucchini baby food for you. So there you go: I did start making your food again! I am excited to be able to make fresh, healthy food for you. You are really enjoying the food and wolfing down larger amounts each day. You are also learning how to sip water from a cup and I bought you your first sippy cup today.

You have been taking a pacifier more often lately. I wouldn’t say you are addicted to it, but it definitely helps you out sometimes when you are cranky. We really have the best of both worlds with it. Still no teeth, either! I guess they will come in their own sweet time. My friend said that the longer they stay in, the stronger they are. We’ll take that one. I’ve had some more fun advice from strangers this month. One person told me that I shouldn’t let you chew on my cell phone since your thin skull is more susceptible to the dangerous waves they emit. One lovely woman had this great piece of advice for me as we walked by: “She’s cold”. At least she said it with a smile. Oh, and I also got called out for letting your chew on a pen (don’t you know the cap is a choking hazard?!). Well, I do my best to only allow you to chew on safe things, but you are a quick grabber, and sometimes the best baby toy available is a spoon. Your greeting of choice lately is usually a big, juicy raspberry. You aren’t content with a sweet smile. No, after you check someone out, you usually blow a few on ‘em. It can be a bit embarrassing. At first, I couldn’t figure out why you did that so frequently. Then Daddy and I watched a few videos of you as a little baby, and I saw myself teaching you how to blow a raspberry, and encouraging you when you did it. I guess you are a fast learner!

Your sitting skills are definitely improved. You can go for quite a while without support. You are much better at rolling both directions, and have gotten very good at propping yourself up on one elbow to look up at whoever is standing over you. Still no crawling, however. I guess we jumped the gun with that expectation as well. Thats just fine with me, though. I was supporting your belly to help you learn to crawl one day, then I realized it wasn’t the sort of thing I needed to rush! Lets keep you away from the power cords and outlets as long as possible.

This past month you received the sign of baptism at church. We learned a lot about baptism before we decided to baptize you. We wanted to make sure it wasn’t just something we were doing because of the particular denomination we happened to be attending at the moment. We were so excited to welcome you into the community of Christian faith by this sign. Although you can’t understand or voluntarily accept that Christ has died for your sins, this sign shows how you are set apart because of our belief, and because of our decision to raise you with an understanding of how much God loves you, and how much we all need that love. At the same time, it reminds us that God set us apart before we understood His love for us and poured out His grace on us just as the water was poured out on you. What a wonderful reminder to us, and promise to you. I pray that we live up to the responsibility that we have been entrusted with.

Little girl, you are more and more fun each day. I cherish this time I have with you at home. You are growing into such a beautiful child, and that isn’t just our opinion, by the way. Plenty of friends and strangers comment on your exceptional good looks. We can’t wait to see what dreams and desires, talents and skills you have just waiting to come out! You are such a perfect picture of potentiality. Maybe that is why your blue eyes sparkle so much!

Love,
Mommy

Hooray!! Now those of you who want to, can see my incredibly cute nephew use his word for Dahlia: “yah-yah”. Thanks to my brother, you can view this phenomenon and other extreme cuteness here.

I knew these things were fun for cats to play with, and our dog sure loves to chase it, but we discovered that the baby really likes it too! Seriously, this thing silenced her mid-scream. Who knew?

Dear little Dahlia,

I want to take advantage of calling you that, as I don’t think it will apply for too much longer! Daddy was looking at you just the other day and thinking you are starting to look less like a baby and more like a little girl! How exciting to welcome your “new personhood”, and sad to say goodbye to our little baby. Half of a year is a long time. You are so old! This has been a long month, partly because I decided to switch over to lunar months, and so it is now Sept. 30th as opposed to Sept. 16th. So you are truly 6 months old now, and not just 24 weeks old.

You have changed so much this month. Compared to what you were like last month, your motor skills have developed so much more that you almost seem like an acrobat! You no longer do any contortions when I lay you down. You simply decide whether you want to be on you back or stomach, and make it so. Most of the time, you like to be on your stomach, because that is where the action is at! You can play on your stomach comfortably for such long periods of time now! You regularly get up on all fours and rock, or lunge toward a desired toy. It seems as if you are practically crawling. I joke that I need to get a tether for you soon if you begin to crawl. As it is, if I put you down in one place, you will be completely turned around and a couple feet away in a few minutes. I can imagine how much you will get into things when you begin to crawl!

You can sit up for a few minutes unattended before you fall into your preferred belly position. We borrowed the Excersaucer from cousin Evan and you enjoy being in there too. However, you quickly become bored with the same old safe baby toys, and constantly search for your favorite choking and laceration hazards like: boxes, pens, nail clippers, silverware, power cords, CD jewel cases, and paper. Now paper doesn’t seem that dangerous, right? Since it is really one of your favorites, sometimes I indulge you and let you nosh on a piece. However, the other day you started making gagging noises, and I was able to sweep a piece of macerated paper pulp from your mouth. I think you swallowed another piece. Yikes, I didn’t think you would try to EAT it!! Needless to say, I no longer give you paper.

At 24 weeks old, we introduced you to “solid food”. At least, thats what everyone else calls it. It really isn’t very solid, though, it is more like a liquid. Technicalities, I know. Anyway, I thought I’d be this wonderful mom and make your food for you instead of investing in the baby food making machines like Gerber or Beechnut. However, that lasted for about one meal! I did make you some organic carrots for your first food, though. You enjoying playing with them a bit, but didn’t eat much. Next, I ended up buying Gerber organic food (I wonder how long the organic thing will last. So far it has lasted longer than the “making your food” phase). You liked sweet potato better, and green peas the most. You actually open your mouth and beg for sweet peas now! Pears weren’t a huge hit. I don’t know whether it was the flavor or the temperature (I served them at room temp). They tasted too sweet to me anyway. So while it hasn’t cut into your nursing at all, or changed your sleep habits significantly, you are pretty regularly eating grown up food, as I like to call it. I haven’t completely given up on making your food, either, so we will see how that ends up.

We have been putting you in the church nursery this month, too. You are so well behaved in church, but you love to talk to the stained glass, and whine about not being able to be on the floor or eat the bulletin. Your verbal skills are getting so much better lately. You like to play at talking, and sometimes we hear mamamama or dadadada, and it inspires a thrill in our selfish parent hearts to imagine you are thinking of us. Anyway, we thought it was the right time to transition to the nursery. Well, sometimes it is OK, and sometimes you decide it is definitely NOT OK. We will keep working on it, though, because I think it is important for you to feel comfortable with other people. And since you don’t know what daycare is, church nursery is a good start.

Daddy and I are hoping to teach you a little sign language, and we signed us up for a class in November. We have started with bye-bye. You actually do this one already on your own. You are enjoying moving your wrist to bash the toys in your hand, and sometimes you do this cute wrist movement in the air when you don’t have a toy. It looks like you are waving, so every time you do it, we mimic you and say bye-bye. I really think you did it back to me one day, but I might have been imagining it. You definitely think it is funny when we do it, though. Although we can elicit smiles from you occasionally, the dog is still the best one to get you to laugh consistently. We knew she was good for something.

We went up to Ithaca last weekend to visit Uncle Russell, Aunt Sarah, and cousin Evan. We had a lot of fun walking around town at the apple festival, and doing some hiking. We always enjoy our visits with them, and wish we lived closer. We bought you your first pair of shoes at a little store there, too! They are an oh-so-stylish pair of Robeez, but you would rather suck on them than wear them. You are just too cute sometimes. You’ve also acquired two other nicknames this month: Daddy calls you Boo, and your cousin Evan calls you Yah-Yah.

Oh Little One. Thats what I call you when we have our most tender moments together. I know that things will change as you grow older, and we will have different sweet times, but this name brings to mind those snapshots we share now when my heart just overflows with love for you: your peaceful little face right after you are done nursing, you laying on your back, grabbing your feet and giggling at me, your sleepy groan that finally extinguishes as you lay your head on my chest and succumb to sleep, your radiant, squinty-eyed, McTernan smile when you see me first thing in the morning(I don’t even know how to smile with my whole face like that!), the way your tiny hands gently explore my face as you nurse contentedly. These things are so precious to me!

Well, I will wrap things up by saying that there is still nothing to report in terms of teeth, so there have been several false alarms in that area. Thats OK, although it seems that every stranger feels they have to comment about you “teething” when they see you chewing on something. Maybe it just tastes good. You are also sleeping like a champ from 7PM-7AM with one feeding around 4AM and some minor wake-ups in between occasionally. Naps are getting more consistent, but overall, I really feel like you are getting plenty of good quality sleep. I am so grateful for this. It is hard work to rearrange schedules for bed times and nap times, but I think it is worth it.

Little girl, YOU are worth it. We love you lots,
Mommy

This post is for you loyal readers who have noticed that 4 more weeks have passed, and I haven’t posted Dear Dahlia, Month 6 yet. Well, I finally decided that I would switch over to lunar month counting. Although Dahlia is 24 weeks old, she won’t be 6 months old until Sept. 30th. If I keep counting calendar weeks, I will get to month 12 when she is still only 11 months old!

I had this same dilemma when I was pregnant. OK, pregnancy lasts 9 months, right? But it is also 40 weeks long. And if there are 4 weeks in a month, that means it is really 10 months long. I know most pregnant women feel that way, regardless.

Anyway…look for my next letter near Sept. 30th.

I just really enjoyed my daughter today. She is getting to be a lot more fun lately! She was laughing a lot today, and sweet as anything. She fell asleep on me in her Ergo carrier when we were out shopping for groceries. We had fun playing today, and I love trying to figure out what makes her giggle. When she got a bit grumpy this evening, Daddy came home with renewed energy to entertain her and spend time with her. Yay! So I finished making the soup for dinner while he gave her a bath and played with her. We then did a smooth trade-off and I nursed her to sleep within minutes. She was ready for bed! I was loving the feeling of a sleepy baby draped on my shoulder before I put her in her crib. She is so rarely sleepy on us anymore. Too much to see and do! I put her down in her crib and she groggily groped for her blankie. I put it on her chest and she clutched it close, rolled over and went to sleep. How amazing. I left the room and sent Ken off to Bible Study with the soup. As he was walking out the door I stopped him by saying,

“You have a spoon in your pants!”.

He took it out of his back pocket and dropped it off on the table. “Yeah, that was Dahlia’s toy.”

Just thought that was too cute.

Yesterday Dahlia went to the Doctor for a check-up. Much to all of our surprise (including the doctor — when he picked her up he said she was heavier than she looked) she wasn’t over 20 lbs. She was a mere 19 lb. 12 oz. What a lightweight! Of course, that is off the charts for her age. It’s somewhere around 105 percentile. Her height, at 26 in., is only the 90 percentile, whatever that means!

We are convinced she weighed more a few weeks ago and lost some weight along the way. Her strict regimen of rolling and sitting up exercises could easily account for that loss!