Wednesday, April 14, 2010

5 Months


Kaycie turned 5 months old over the weekend. Yes, I'm a bit late posting an update, but we were out of town over the weekend and I've been sleeping in 2 hour segments every night since we got home, so functioning on a high level hasn't been a priority. No doc visit this month, but the last time we put her on the scale she was nearly 17 1/2 pounds and is now wearing some of her 9 month clothes. Geezum peetes.

As you may have guessed, Kaycie has quit sleeping. She's going to bed around 7, waking up at 8 (and sometimes again at 9) then sleeping in 3 hour spurts, at most, with at least one hour and half spurt at some point during the night. My child is slowly killing her momma. Yes I've tried crying it out. No, it doesn't work. I have read many times that the 4-6 month stretch simply sucks when it comes to sleep and the most effective thing to do is wait it out and remember that it won't last forever. One point made was that no kid every has to take her momma to college to rock her back to sleep at 2:30 in the morning. There have been nights of late when I fear Kaycie may be the first...

Her eating is also all screwed up. Most of the time when she wakes up at night she's starving and will take a full bottle. During the day she isn't hungry much and just grazes. She'll eat a couple of ounces, wait half an hour, eat another ounce, wait a while, and then be hungry again right at naptime and take half a bottle. This is not a good schedule. Nothing I've tried will get her back on track. I mention this mostly on the off chance somebody out there has a piece of magical advice to solve the feeding/sleeping conundrum so that I can actually sleep again before I'm a member of AARP. And for the record, if you do have a solution, based on everything I've read, I'm pretty sure you could be a millionaire quickly.*

But on to the fun parts. We've started eating solid food! Carrots are the current favorite, but she's also eating acorn squash, peas, bananas, and avocado. She isn't entirely sure about the avocado, but if I mix with the squash it's the most awesome thing ever. I dunno why. Next up on the list is sweet potatoes, green beans, and butternut squash. I'm hoping to get her introduced to enough new foods before we leave for vacation that I can take a variety and not have to try something new while we're at the beach.

Oh please let her start sleeping before we leave for the beach!


Being her daddy's child, she's become obsessed with electronic gadgets. My cell phone is a favorite, along with TV remotes and my laptop. Of course, she shares my DNA as well and therefore can entertain herself with a plastic cup. At least she's well rounded.

The problem with stranger anxiety has eased up a little. The only people she has serious issues with now are her two grandfathers. This is a problem people. She absolutely loves BFF Lauren and Uncle Bill. And she's fascinated by Casper. She'll talk to him, watch him closely as he moves around the house, and has starting trying to pet him. Oh boy.

She can sit up on her own for short stretches of time. Not well enough for me to leave her while she's doing it, but she doesn't need me for support. I mostly catch her when she topples over reaching for things. She's also started rolling from side to side all the time, and occasionally rolls herself onto her tummy by accident. I say by accident because being on her tummy is the worst thing ever and will bring on a traumatized fit. If tummy time is required for crawling, I think she'll be happy to just skip to walking. She also has moved into the stage where she gets traumatized if we leave the room. That brings a whole new challenge to trying to do laundry or cook on the grill.

And did I mention we're getting a tooth up front? She's been biting the daylights out of me with it since last Friday!

I'm sure there are a dozen things I'm missing, but I'm too tired to worry about it. Here's hoping next month brings more sleep.

*While desperately researching the sleep issue I found this website which I love. Very practical information like, "the 3-6 month stage absolutely SUCKS when it comes it sleeping..."

Thursday, April 8, 2010

Sprouts

I finally got to plant my box garden this year. My dad made me a box last fall, which I planned to plant in March. Unfortunately, I spent all of March, April, and part of June trying really hard to keep my head out of the toilet. To put it mildly, the first trimester of pregnancy is not the ideal time to start a garden!

This year I was afraid I wouldn't make it again. I didn't want to keep Kaycie outside for long stretches and, well, I pretty much spend all my time with her! But thankfully my mom came to visit last week while Greg was out of town and between the two of us we got the dirt and the seeds and got everything planted. The amazing thing is that I had the first signs of spouts less than a week later!

And I mean I have some serious sprouts. Yesterday morning I went out and I found this:



Then yesterday afternoon that same sprout looked like this:



And I'm not talking one sprout, I have sprouts all over my box! These are green beans, but I also have zucchini, butternut squash, acorn squash, buttercup squash, spinach, carrots, green peas, and an eggplant. Every single one of them have sproutage! I'm stoked. For the record, no, this garden isn't much for Greg and I. Greg won't touch hardly any of that (maybe the green beans, maybe). It's mostly for Kaycie. We go out twice every day to look at her sprouts. I can't wait to feed her fresh veggies from her own garden!

Monday, April 5, 2010

Kitchen Week

It's Kitchen Week here at the Hall home.

What's kitchen week? It's what most people would consider a kitchen day, but as I have an almost 5 month old baby girl, I'm giving myself a more realistic time frame...

A couple of months ago we revised our weekly grocery budget so I could shop less often and stock up on sale items when I did. After several weeks I now have a stash of food and I need to do something with it. I found the meat I like to use for steak bites on sale twice, so I need to cut them into bites and freeze them in batches in marinade. I also stocked up enough ground beef to make several batches of homemade sloppy joes, tacos and spaghetti sauce for the freezer. Kroger must have miscalculated the need for pork chops last week because the Reduced for Quick Sale bin was overflowing with them. I bought a couple of packs to put in the freezer, which means I can also whip up a big batch of my homemade shake and bake coating. I also want to try another seasoning glaze on some chops, so maybe I'll go ahead and work on that, too. Plus, I want to make up a batch of breakfast burritos for Greg to take to work. I've made them a few at a time, but I've heard that they freeze well and I want to give it a try. I also have a couple of bread machine recipes I want to try, since I scored a machine for $10 at the Gateway Thrift Store store a couple of weeks ago.

In the meantime, Kaycie has started her journey into vegetables, so I've loaded up on new things to introduce to her. So far she's been eating carrots (which she loves) and acorn squash. I already have butternut squash and sweet potatoes prepped as well, but I bought more fresh organic carrots, zucchini, and snap beans, as well as frozen green and sweet peas (which I couldn't find fresh). That's a lot of steaming and baking to do!

Yes, I'm making Kaycie's baby food. If you want to make fun of me for that you might want to hold off a little while, as I'm thinking I'm going to be doing a post on that topic a little later.

And finally, if you made it this far into this post you deserve a little something special. For all of you who hate the yellow dust of Spring and are mired in the misery of pollen, here's a little something to help you remember why Spring doesn't totally suck: