Right now, I am…

Sore! Which means mama has been surfing a bunch which means mama is….

Stoked!!!! Swell is up and papa and I have been switching off baby beach duty over the past few days

Finding mud in between the tiny toes and fat rolls of my little man after his little romp in the “jungle” this afternoon

Craving coconut water after watching hubby crack open the last coconut from our recent tree raid

This Moment- A Friday ritual. A single photo- no words- capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor, and remember. If you’re inspired to do the same, leave a link to your ‘moment’ in the comments for all to find and see.

Baby Led Weaning is the new term for an old style of introducing solid foods to your baby. In a nutshell, Baby Led Weaning (BLW) eliminates the purees, the need for ice cube trays and food processors, mashers, cereal, fruit and veggie combos and anything different than the food you and me eat everyday at every meal.

With BLW you simply offer food in large chunks and let your baby explore. The sky is the limit when introducing food, although there are some common sense guidelines and pointers discussed in the book “Baby Led Weaning” by Gill Rapley. If your child is interested in the food they pick it up, put it in their mouth and push it around all while deciding whether or not to actually eat it.

If your baby is anything like Harper they will devour anything you put in front of them or if they simply stare at what’s available that is also ok. The BLW process has less focus on what is actually consumed (since all nutrition needs are still being provided from moms milk/formula at this time) and more about discovering tastes, textures, temperatures and practicing hand eye coordination.

We’ve been using this approach with Harper since he was about 6 1/2 months old and absolutely love the process. Not only does BLW mean that we aren’t making separate foods but it also means that meals are a family occasion. When we eat and what we eat, baby eats. It’s as simple as that.

You might be curious what we actually offer the little man. We’ve been surprised at the amount and variety of foods that Harper can put down. He literally hasn’t refused a SINGLE thing and counts salmon among one of his favorites! For Breakfast we usually offer a combo of fruits, grains and protein. Bananas, strawberries, whole wheat toast fingers and a fried egg were on the menu this morning. Lunch and dinner have more of a veggie focus, usually some sort of squash/zucchini/carrot/asparagus or any other veggie we have in the house served lightly steamed/grilled and in chunks about 2″ long and 1/2″ wide. I like to offer some sort of protein such as chicken (with a variety of different herbs/spices), fish (salmon and tuna are favorites) and usually a bean or rice as well.

Although these aren’t the most riveting videos, I took some short clips of Harper getting down with his food throughout the day. I’m always amazed at how easily and naturally he is able to grab his food and get it into his mouth!

Worried about choking? It hasn’t been a problem and according to the BLW experts, a babies gag reflex makes it less likely for them to choke on solids foods than purees since they have to be coordinated enough to get food into their mouth and they control the speed and quantity of what goes in. We’ve certainly had some gagging but *fingers crossed I don’t jinx it* no choking or even close calls. With that being said, I think anyone with a solid foods eating infant/child should brush up on their CPR/ First Aid skills just in case and have instructions and emergency numbers posted nearby eating areas for reference.

If you’re interested in the BLW approach I recommend checking out the book, cookbook and the online resources listed below:

Baby Led Weaning

Baby Led

Momtastic

If you’re into the puree thing my pal and fellow blogger 7X7XMommy has some great information on her blog! Check out her Solids section  for great step by step instructions on making some great puree grub for your little one.

When hubby and I were on our honeymoon almost 6 years ago we joked about the magic maids that hid under our bed. The magic maids were blink of an eye quick, thorough and always left some sort of surprise just to let us know they had been around. We would leave the room for literally 5 minutes and return to a lemon scented and freshly polished bathroom, a perfectly made up bed and a fancy little towel animal posed with a delicious mint.

We guessed that there was some sort of motion sensor in the room that would go off whenever we left. The maids would be alerted “Coast is clear, get to work” and crawl out from under our messy bed. They would snap their magic little fingers and put everything back into it’s place within seconds disappearing before we could witness them in action.

Oh how I wish I had a magic maid this morning.

As expected, after choosing the word Patience as my Word of the Week, the universe threw me a grand test this morning. While cleaning up Harper’s breakfast mess I managed to shatter the second to last glass in our house (I’ve broken all others over the past few weeks in similar fashion). I rushed to pick up Harper as he was playing at my feet and threw together a giant blockade in attempts to contain him while I cleaned up the mess.

After searching for a broom and realizing it was on the lanai I climbed over my blockade (it was pretty impressive) only to find my dear son playing with a handful of POOP!

Yes, Poop!

In the two minutes I had left him alone he had a diaper blow out of epic proportion and decided to spread it all over the floor, his toys and on our brand new couch.

Now I’m dealing with POOP everywhere and shattered glass between me and the bathtub. With arms as far away from my body as humanely possible I scooped up my foul little love and whisked him off to the changing table as fast as I could…poo drops following behind and subsequently covering the only patch of floor not already covered in glass shards.

After cleaning Harper up as best I could I strapped him to my back (thank God for the Ergo) and headed back to the toxic zone. Armed with baby wipes and a bleach bottle I cleaned up the poo finger paint and once again left him (fingers crossed for no more diaper issues) and headed back to my original mess in the kitchen.

I sit here now, at a whooping 11:00am exhausted, impressed with my self and amazed at all I’ve been thrown and tackled before the clock has even struck noon.

Patience. Yes, I’m becoming somewhat of an expert in this department.

When Harper was first born we didn’t give much thought to the idea of a routine. With a newborn I think much of the day to day stuff is based on pure survival. As long as both mommy and baby eat and sleep at some point in a 24 hour period the day can pretty much be considered a success.

As Harper has grown older we’ve been able to keep our lifestyle pretty close to our pre-baby days and have made it a point to not use the baby as an excuse to not do something. If friends are getting together for a BBQ, a surf, an evening sail or sunset on the beach we do our best to show up just like we did before. We’ve been pretty impressed with ourselves as the list of things we couldn’t do because we are now parents is much shorter than the list of things we have done.

I mean come on…what almost 8 month old do you know that has been on 10 airplanes, a stand up paddle board, a kayak, a sailing trip to the Caribbean, a handful of sailing trips to Waikiki for Friday night fireworks, paddled on a surfboard, hiked multiple island trails, swims on a daily basis, has been to three different costume parties, jumps into the pool on his own (seriously, video to come) and rocks out to The Black Keys? This guy is pretty damn impressive and we are some lucky parents to get to hang out with this little one each day.

With all that Harper packs into his days there is little room left for a “schedule” BUT lately Mr. Man has been having some major sleeping issues. Taking a look at our day to day events it was pretty clear that we needed to implement some sort of routine to bring order to the chaos and so I present you with a very loose representation of our days:

MORNING:

7AM

Wake Up (We tried for an 8am wake up but its only happened once-Boo Hoo)

7-7:30

Nurse in bed and morning snuggles

8:00

Breakfast

8:30-9:45

Morning stories, songs, stretching

9:45

First nap of the day

10:30 (or sooner unfortunately)

Up from Nap

11:00

Nurse

AFTERNOON:

12:00PM

Lunch

12:30-1:30

Play/Walk/Swim at beach

2:00ish

Nap

3:00

Nurse

4:00

Snack

EVENING:

4:30-6:00

Play, hang with papa, afternoon run (there is usually a cat nap somewhere in here)

6:30

Dinner

7:00

Bath/ Stories/ Nurse

7:30

Bed Time

******

So how did we come up with this schedule and why does it work for us? Well for those of you soon to be parents or those of you with a little one around some of this info might be helpful. If you find yourselves dealing with the same sort of sleep issues we have been having take note from our learning experience.

While having flexibility in our days is extremely important to us we have found and research agrees that kids need predictability. Having set feeding and sleeping times is probably one of the most essential parts of a baby/kids growth, peace of mind and ultimately sleeping habits.

We learned that once we set fixed times for eating and sleeping Harper has begun to recognize the order of our day and goes down for naps and the night easier. We also learned that having a “Eat, Play, Sleep” cycle is important and we had been mixing up the last two. Harper began to be dependent on the eating part in order to fall asleep and so when he woke up during the middle of a nap or the middle of the night he needed to nurse in order to fall back to sleep.

We are still working on this one since it is a hard habit to break so do yourself a favor and don’t fall into this trap. This isn’t to say you can’t or shouldn’t feed/nurse your baby to sleep…heck do what feels best and works for you but for us this has created a monster who needs to suck for just a minute in order to soothe himself back to sleep rather than finding other ways that don’t involve mama to go back down.

The other really important thing we have learned along the way is the demon of being overtired. Who would have thought that being too sleepy can make it nearly impossible for a baby to wind down and actually fall asleep. This has been one of those big kickers for us as Harper’s days are filled with so much excitement that it’s hard for him to stop and chill. This is where mama comes in and has to protect her babies environment, set up calm times that lead into sleep times and be vigilant in watching for those sleepy signals. Once you start to see those sleepy signs it’s time to start prep for nap so that you don’t pass the sleep window and head into overwired, cranky, fussy baby hell!

I’ll be posting a more detailed description of our sleep routine, issues and what we’ve learned along the way in the near future so keep an eye out!

Got any other tips for us as we continue to navigate this “kinda” routine/sleep issues thing? Leave a comment!

With all the news coverage of Hurricanes Irene and Katia it was easy to miss the headlines about Hurricane Harper. In case you missed it, in the blink of an eye this happened:

Right Now, I am...

Practicing a bit of that patience thing as I find myself up at 6am on a *holiday* and prying my eyelids open after a night of little sleep

Praying that I see a tooth or something to explain this random sleep setback (ummm other than the fact that we just returned from vacation, that our sleep routine has been non-existent, that we missed daddy for a few days and we’ve embarked on the new milestone of pulling oneself up…yeah all of these things might have something to do with it but it’s still frustrating!!!)

Loving the mini “staycation” we embarked on this weekend; including margarita night, an afternoon bike ride, ham and cheese omelets, naps at the park, lots of pool time and relaxing the time away laying in the grass under great big shady trees and enjoying the company of friends

Excited to have hubbys full attention for one more day as we unplug from the computer, our phones and all other distractions and enjoy this holiday!

Wishing you all a fun filled Labor Day

*Originally written 2/21/2010

I woke up this morning and immediately I thought the word for the day would be play. Hubby and I had great plans of sailing our 27′ Catalina into the gorgeous beach of Waikiki, relax, swim, maybe have our friends swim out and join our exclusive party. It was to be the ultimate play day. Although the day was fun I think the more appropriate theme would be patience.

:The state or quality of being patient; the power of suffering with fortitude; uncomplaining endurance of evils or wrongs, as toil, pain, poverty, insult, oppression, calamity, etc. [1913 Webster]

:The act or power of calmly or contentedly waiting for something due or hoped for; forbearance. [1913 Webster]

:Constancy in labor or application; perseverance. [1913 Webster]

Today I practiced the utmost patience any sailor can possibly excercise amidst shifting winds, stalling winds, rolling waves and a failing engine. Yeah, it was one of those kinds of sailing days. What normally takes us two hours turned into a 7 hour ordeal and we never actually made it to our destination. The first half we were cruising, enjoying the sunshine and promising wind direction. Our landmarks for anchoring were in sight and then nothing. Absolutely nothing. Complete calm. Utter stillness. Not even a puff. We drifted for literally 3 hours before deciding to try to head home.

We did everything our little sailor minds could think of and still no movement. We laughed as leaves floated past us making more headway than we had in hours. Spinnaker up, spinnaker down. Sails in, Sails out. Over and over and over again.

Patience my friends. Apparently the universe felt I needed a little practice. I’m happy to report the day was not a complete bust. I enjoyed the quiet time with hubs and my father in law and our full day adventure provided some much needed time away from the hustle and bustle of living in a huge tourist trap!

********************

My, how the idea of patience has become a daily theme as a new mama! Not only am I learning to be patient with myself but also how to act with patience when caring for my little guy as he discovers, attempts and explores the world around him. Patience has always been something I’ve strived to embrace and bring to my days and relationships but never has it been more of a necessity or struggle than during this new phase of my life.

Hubs and I have realized just how important patience is in building and sustaining a relationship and try to keep it in mind throughout our communication and more importantly our actions. Patience is critical in this gig as parents and know that we have some sleepless nights and days of rambunctious kids ahead of us to perfect this important word!