Lima Beans?
Oliver has gone through phases of eating different foods. He started off eating hummus, which he now doesn’t like… a texture thing perhaps? Now Oliver is into a lima bean phase. I don’t know when, if ever, I ate lima beans as a kid. (Hey Mom, do you want to weigh in on this?) I would have never thought to feed Oliver lima beans, except I happened to buy a bag of frozen mixed vegetables. I bought it for the carrots, green beans, and peas – all acceptable to Oliver right now – and never noticed the inclusion of the baby lima beans. He’s crazy about them. Last night baby lima beans were the foundation of dinner.
I’m sure my Irish grandmother would have never supposed that her daughter would grow up to eat sushi and Indian food. Oliver does like garlic naan, by the way – but then, who doesn’t? Lima beans are not nearly as exotic, just not what I would suppose a 12 month old would choose for dinner!
The Morning Music
Jeremy and I have always listened to music as we prepared our weekend breakfast. The morning music has changed recently. Jeremy has discovered that Pandora Radio has a toddler channel. This morning I emerged from the bedroom to hear Ziggy Marley singing the Arthur theme song. Who knew? (Any of our friends who have children old enough to watch Arthur, presumably.)
We also discovered that Oliver likes Queen. After much over-stimulation and the introduction of chocolate to Oliver’s diet at his birthday party, Oliver accidentally cued up, “A Kind of Magic,” on my iPhone and jammed away to the whole song. For those of you who know Oliver, to jam to more than 20 seconds of a song is rare, let a alone a whole song. We have video footage somewhere on one of Jeremy’s devices, but I don’t have a copy yet so it will be a while before it makes an appearance on the blog. Various other Queen songs have also resulted in boogie time, but none so dramatic as his birthday party boogie!
Baby Led Weaning…
Baby led weaning is supposed to mean the gradual introduction of solids to a baby’s diet, following the cues from the baby to determine when to introduce new things. Right now we are experiencing baby led weaning in the sense that Oliver has decided he’s pretty much done with the bottle. Over the last week or so Oliver has significantly decreased the amount of milk he’s been drinking during child care. He still nurses in the morning, at night, and before naps over the weekend, but when it comes to the bottle he has lost interest. After months of pumping and concern over my milk supply (personal and freezer), this is a little stressful. I am concerned that it is a passing phase and that if I allow my supply to dwindle I’ll suddenly be caught off guard. If it’s not, it’s one of the first of the “lasts.” (Note: I previously referenced this article in my post of October 7th 2012.) That said, Oliver’s last bottle is probably not too far in the future, which will lead to the beginning of the end of nursing… which is a whole other kind of stress and a much longer blog post.
Happy Birthday!
Happy birthday, Oliver!
I’ll post more details on birthday events later, but here’s a little preview:
Commingled Recycling
Boston has had commingled recycling for several years now. I love it. Particularly being on the 3rd floor in a small apartment, we don’t have enough space for our stuff, let alone for various categories of recycling. For years we have just thrown everything into a container by the door and brought it out as needed.
Recently Oliver has become enamored of this “box of toys” we keep in the kitchen. Milk bottles, cereal boxes, and the occasional paper bag have made their way out of the recycling and have been found around the house. We now have to keep the cans and sharp recycling out of the way until it’s time to bring the box downstairs. But the most surprising part has been that Oliver has been recycling on his own. The other day I found a toy phone and a shoe as I started to dump the box into our giant recycle bin! I guess it’s back to sorting our recycling again… At least for a while.
Portland Again
Over February break time when I wasn’t doing my day job we spent a few days up in Portland. We ate lots of yummy food, including some favorites of the whole family, Kamasouptra, and Standard Baking Co. We walked, visited the book store, and generally enjoyed our time away from home.
We also took quite a few pictures of Oliver. It’s what we do. But I was struck particularly by the fact that he is now at the age where one moment he looks like a baby and the next he is a little man.
I submit the following pieces of evidence:
Baby…
Little man.
Once again a baby…
Definitely a little man!
Some of these pictures were taken within hours of each other! How does Oliver do it?
And how is it even remotely possible he will be 1 in a couple of short weeks?!?
Bait and Switch
Child observes Dad taking off the child safety latch on one of the cabinets. Child runs to bedroom and steals a sock from the laundry. Child waves the sock at Dad, who says, “Oh, do you have a smelly sock?” Child closes the distance to give the sock to Dad… and VOILA! is in the the previously locked cabinet.
We are in so much trouble.
Requisite Snow Photo
During the recent Blizzard of ’13 Oliver and I had a lot of time indoors. Unfortunately, we spent much of it under the weather. During the storm on Friday we made it outside for a little while and Oliver was not so sure about the cold, white stuff. I didn’t know at that point he was starting a cold. By Saturday he was running a fever and on Sunday he woke from his nap with conjunctivitis. To top it off, Sunday evening he fell and got a bloody nose. It was not our most fun weekend, that’s for sure.
We are both feeling better now, which is good as it’s February vacation! Yay!
Not so sure about this snow stuff…
Cough, cold, conjunctivitis, and a bloody nose to boot. Not my best day. Luckily Dad let me watch a few Sesame Street songs on YouTube.
Are You My Mother?
Amanda gave Oliver the book, Are You My Mother? at the HMS baby shower. The book is a classic & much enjoyed in our house. Tonight it was in the spirit of the book that Oliver asked Calle to read it to him.
Unfortunately, like the little bird in the story, Oliver went to the wrong place. In the end he asked me and we read it together.
