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Look Who’s Eating
Tuesday, July 27th, 2010 | Author: Erika

Oh you guys.  I was all fired up about introducing solid foods.  I did research, made decisions, and settled in to wait until Aidan was six months old before getting my steamed veggies on.

Then, parenthood happened.  Or, rather, the universal truism that when you make a plan, your child laughs.

For a few weeks now, Wes and I have given Aidan slices of fruits to gnaw on to appease his insatiable gums.  It feels like he’s been teething for about a year now, and he’s much happier when he has something to crush with his pitbull jaws.  He’d prefer to pulverize our fingers, but will just as happily take ice cubes, slices of apple, mango cores, that sort of thing (with, of course, rigid, militant supervision).

On Saturday, Wes shared a little of his fresh farmer’s market nectarine with Aidan and Aidan just looked so happy gumming it that we thought we’d steam and puree some more and then see how it went.

Aidan first solid food 21 weeks old 1We steamed, we pureed, we sat Aidan down in his bouncy chair, and grabbed the wee baby spoon.  Aidan looked on with interest while I settled myself in front of him with the food and Wes took up a position off to the side for optimal photo-taking.

I loaded up a tiny bit of food on the spoon, brought it close to Aidan’s mouth and…He opened his mouth and ate it.  Just slurped it right off the spoon.  No funny faces, no pushing it out with his tongue.

He opened his mouth, swallowed what was on the spoon, and then opened his mouth again.  Easy peasy.

Aidan first solid food 21 weeks old 4In retrospect, the writing’s been on the wall for awhile that Aidan was ready for solid foods.  He’s pointedly interested in whatever we put in our mouths, he will grab whatever he can reach and cram it into his mouth, and he’s getting increasingly squirmy and disinterested while breastfeeding.

I told Wes this weekend that I think this will be my last month of breastfeeding.  Aidan’s just so busy, and interested in the world around him, that breastfeeding him is less a time of bonding and more a time of child wrangling and milk dripping all over the both of us.  I think I’ll give him the benefit of a solid six months of exclusive breastfeeding, and then we’ll go to bottles, defrosting the supply from the freezer until it’s all gone.

I’m considering continuing to pump, and just giving Aidan bottles of the pumped milk, but I have my doubts about how long I’ll do that.  We’ll see.  The only thing I know for certain is that my little baby is growing up faster every day, and I am completely ill-equipped to deal with it.  I feel like I wake up every day and wonder who the little boy is who’s squealing with delight at me from my wee baby’s crib.

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Ch-ch-ch-ch-chaaanges!
Thursday, July 22nd, 2010 | Author: Erika
Aidan 20 weeks old 2

Tasty feet and toys make Aidan's face look like this.

Aidan really and truly discovered his feet last night.  The previous week held the discovery of the presence of vaguely hand-like apparatuses at the ends of his legs, but he broke the wrapper off those tootsies last night and started trying in earnest to get them into his mouth.

He also started work on mastering the art of bringing toys to his mouth last week.  He’s still more likely to end up with a toy in his eye or conked against the side of his head, but maybe 2/5 attempts ends with a vigorously bitten and drooled on toy in his mouth.

In other words, my baby is ever-faster learning the mechanics of being a big kid and leaving more and more of his babyhood in the dust.  I keep looking at him pulling himself up to a sitting position, avidly watching me eat, and taking stompy little baby steps when I hold him up on his feet, and I wonder exactly how long I have before he’s moving around the house on his own, feeding himself and saying ‘No thank you’ to breastmilk the minute he discovers beef.

It was in the midst of all this discovery (on Aidan’s part) and wonder (on my part) that Wes proposed a vacation.  We’re pretty close to Victoria B.C., and we’ve visited before, and the local ship that takes people there was offering a 50% discount so long as you booked before September 26, 2010.

Wes asked me if I wanted to take a weekend vacation with him, maybe having Aidan stay with his parents while we escaped and took wine tours and ate leisurely meals.  On the one hand, I practically started salivating at the prospect of all that relaxation and time with my husband.  The more I started thinking about it, though, the more anxious I got.

The prospect of me leaving him for days makes Aidan's face look like this.

The prospect of me leaving him for days makes Aidan's face look like this.

Not only would I have to bring a breast pump with me on vacation (which sounds exactly as fun as having a troupe of kittens kick litter right in my face), I’d be leaving my baby for days.  Days.  For all I know, he’d have learned how to walk and solve quadratic equations by the time we got back.

The more I thought about that, the more anxious I got, and I realized that spending money to go on a vacation where in all likelihood I would spend the majority of my time uncomfortable and anxious was probably a pretty dumb idea.  I’m just plain not ready, I guess.

I have no doubt that there will come a day when I will be ready.  This will likely be when Aidan’s weaned and I won’t have to bring my breast pump on vacations with me.  I guess all the change just freaked me out a bit.  Aidan’s figuring stuff out and growing so quickly, and now we’re discussing vacations, my poor brain just slammed on the brakes and put the kibosh on any more nonsense for a bit.

I did promise Wes that we would take another vacation to Victoria B.C. next summer, and that it would probably be the last vacation we took before starting to try to get pregnant with baby numero dos.  He agreed, and now we have something fun to look forward to!  But still, all these changes, they’ll likely be the end of me.

Category: A Touch of the Crazy, Aidan  | Leave a Comment
Aidans, Aidans Everywhere…
Tuesday, July 20th, 2010 | Author: Erika

Family pic Aidan 18 weeks oldSummer evenings in Washington tend to be pretty awesome in every way.  Perfect temperature, light breezes, daylight until 9 pm.  Perfection!

Wes and I make the most of these by taking a walk after dinner every evening that we can.  We strap Aidan into his Baby Bjorn (which he loves) and perambulating we go, three Mitchells taking in a summer evening.  I’m absolutely certain that these walks in no way atone for the amount of cheese we gleefully consume in our household, but it gets us some much-needed Vitamin D.  Surely the Vitamin D cancels out the cholesterol, no?

Anyway.  We walk in the evenings, and during the course of these walks we meet a good many people from around our neighborhood.  We passed a mother of two elementary school-aged kids, and she stopped to coo over Aidan, exclaiming, “I remember the Bjorn stage!”

She then asked us what his name was, and when we replied that his name is Aidan, she laughed and pointed to her son, telling us that his name was Aidan too.  We all laughed over the shared name, and she said that she has a neighbor whose child is named Aidan, and that she was pretty sure there was another Aidan in the neighborhood too.

As we walked away, I chided Wes, saying, “This is why you don’t name your child with the #1 most popular boy name in America!”  He shrugged and said he didn’t really care, while I equivocated that at least this meant our son wouldn’t get mocked by schoolmates for having a strange name.

The thing with Aidan’s name is that, when we picked it, it wasn’t the most popular name in America.  Aidan’s name has been picked out since 2002, when Wes and I first started dating.  We were on the phone late one night, talking about whether either of us wanted to have kids.

I told Wes I couldn’t see myself having kids, as I had no experience with little ones and was pretty certain I’d be a shoddy mother.  He said he fully intended to have kids someday, and that he’d want them to have cool Irish names (Wes is part Irish, and loves his Irish heritage).

I asked him if he had any names in mind, and he said the only one he was certain of was the name of his first son, whom he wanted to name Aidan.  When I asked if he had a middle name picked out, he said he’d probably want to name his first son after his father and use his father’s first name as Aidan’s middle name.

And so it was.  Aidan’s name, spelled out and well-loved well before his parents got their act together enough to get hitched.  Of course, we have other names picked out and ready to go.  Whether the next baby is a boy or girl, his or her name is ready to go, with a name from my side of the family ready to serve as a middle name.

While we waited to have babies, the rest of the country fell in love with the name Aidan and now there are Aidans everywhere.  The nice thing is, at least we won’t have to worry about no one knowing how to spell our son’s name…

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You’d Cook a Lot Too…
Friday, July 16th, 2010 | Author: Erika

Aidan and his spoon 18 weeks old 4…If you had a helper this cute!  I’m pleading crushing sleepiness following a monster-busy week with shoddy sleep, and so shall leave you with this cute picture and nothing substantive at all to speak of.  Have a great weekend everyone!

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Giving the Hamsters a Break
Thursday, July 15th, 2010 | Author: Erika

My mind’s been a bit of a hamster wheel lately.  It keeps spinning spinning spinning about one of two issues, interchanging them seemingly at random until it feels like surely these are the only things everyone else is thinking about too.  In an effort to give the hamsters a break, I’ll lay bare my issues.  Maybe you can shake a stick at them and make them disappear for me?

The first thing I keep mulling over in my mind is how many kids I want to have.  Wes is content to have two and then see how we feel.  I can already tell how I’m going to feel: Right after baby two is born, I’ll be certain we’re done.  When baby two is a few months old, however, I’ll panic at the prospect of not having any more babies to snuggle and want more.

Trying to figure out how many kids to have is a huge responsibility!  We’re essentially deciding how many people we want to bring into the world, how many tiny humans we want to watch take their first breaths and then raise in a loving, stable home.

I’ve always seen myself as the kind of person who has a lot of love to give, and therefore would be at ease with three kids.  A hectic but happy household.  Now that I have a little baby, though, I see how much work it is!  The thought of doing this not once but twice more makes me want to take a 20 year nap.

Then there are the mechanics of having more than two kids.  From what I hear, having two kids is do-able, but when the kids start outnumbering the parents things turn into a bit of a circus.  But I like circuses!

The second issue I’ve been chewing on like the proverbial old bone is when to start Aidan on solid foods.  He’s been exclusively breastfed, and I don’t know why but I’ve always had it in my head that he’d be weaned by the time he was six months and on solid foods then.

After researching the issue, however, I’ve learned that almost everyone in the world recommends exclusive breastmilk/formula for the first six months, and then introducing solid foods but still providing the bulk of nutrition with breastmilk/formula until one year.  Then there are all these studies showing correlations (which, thanks to my psych degree, I know means nothing much until more research is done) between introducing solid foods prior to six months of age and diabetes/childhood obesity.

I was all gung-ho to start mashing up food and smearing it all over Aidan’s face.  I bought a Beaba, bought some wee baby spoons, and plotted his first meal.  Now, however, I’m getting cold feet.

After discussing the issue with Wes last night, I decided we’re just going to wait until Aidan’s six months old to introduce solid foods.  It will just make me feel better, and sometimes your mother’s intuition is all you have to go on.

Now, to merge the two hamsters…A spin-off question then becomes: If we do have three kids, will I fret over when to introduce solid foods to the third kid as much as I am for Aidan?  Almost assuredly not, for by the third kid I shall be wise and competent…Or else so subsumed by laundry as to no longer have the capacity to care so much.  Either or.

Category: Aidan, Babies  | Tags:  | 12 Comments
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