ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

...and Catholics can eat it on Fridays during Lent.

fish is absolutely meat.

Under jewish law, chicken = meat but fish does not. You are (or were) supposed to eat meat on the sabbath, but for Jews who couldn't afford meat, they made a special exception for chicken as long as you treated it like meat and did not combine with milk.

interestingly, chicken = meat is only by rabbinical decree. acc to the torah poultry isn't meat.

i don't think i'd heard the 'poor jews eating chicken' explanation before - i learnt that it was about confusing the two bc of textures + animalness

also i don't think sephardim eat fish w/ milk either -- maybe for same reason? i don't know wtf they do about cream cheese + lox tho. does not sound like a way to live.

right, that's what I mean, rabbinic decree that it could be treated as meat for jews who couldn't afford meat. But that might be bubbemeise.

Trying first night with baby in crib, not in room

Aaaahhhhhh this is so weird

a toast to that weirdness my friend

This is just terrible

The day we moved back to a 2-bedroom and K got her own room was one of the happiest days of my life

It would be bad form if I just posted "aaaaggghgggjhhhhhhh" here every 5 minutes for the rest of the night huh

how's the little one handling it?

lol K was waking us up every 20 minutes last night until 2:30 at which point we were finally like "fuck this, cry it out." She went through an epic tantrum in which she went through every manner of screaming and every possible request:

"WATER!!!!
"MILK!!!!"
"COME OUT!!!"
"YOU NEED TO COOL OFF!!!!" (this is what I tell her when I put her in the crib for time out)
"UP!!!!"
"BLANKET!!!!"
"TUCK IN!!!!"
"DADDY TO READ BOOK!!!!!"
"MOMMY HERE!!!!"
etc.

haha, so funny and disgraceful.

HOW DO I INSTALL PARENTS VISTA

MODS!

Did she ever go to sleep?

Yeah it actually didn't take that long - maybe 10-15 mins? We were actually stifling laughter in our bedroom, which felt sort of guilty.

I was dying at her screaming "YOU NEED TO COOL OFF!!! YOU NEED TO COOL OFF!!!"

After Ivy got her shots she was pretty fussy and was trying to nurse while crying and making this hilarious A-BLOUYA-BLOUYA-BLOUYA sound and I could not stop laughing so I feel you.

YOU NEED TO COOL OFF is pretty funny, though. And that's great that she fell asleep!

While we're laughing at toddler pain:
http://www.quickmeme.com/p/3vsm3j

Wow, so a 2-year-old can vomit a lot more than you think they can. Two huge hurls all over our favorite middle eastern restaurant (after the really nice owners had given us a bunch of extra food and been super nice to us!), two more on the subway, and then a series of four or five more throughout the night in her bed (granted the last few were mostly water with a few seeds from the bread she ate).

When her grandma came over this morning, the first thing K told her was "I threw up on the train!"

3rd day of introducing solid (well not solid in any way I understand solid, but not breast milk) food to Michael, and he is a fucking champ abt it. Gets all stoked when we walk in with the food bowl. Did 2 days of rice cereal with milk and then jumped to sweet potato purée today and he went apeshit for it.

Am now completely convinced that the baby brezza is the best kid thing I have ever bought. Ok maybe the rock and play, but this comes in a close second. Soooooo easy.

This thing

http://www.babybrezza.com/store.php/appliances/baby-brezza-one-step-baby-food-maker/

Fucking magic.

We had something like that. It's great, although the usage span is very short because pretty soon they eat solid foods.

FWIW we kind of threw caution to the wind and introduced all kinds of foods pretty early on, and it seems to have worked well for her eating. OTOH, I guess (1) maybe we were just lucky with food allergies and (2) this is anecdotal evidence (of what I'm not even sure)

Tbh if it just makes a few months easier, that's well worth $100 to me, esp considering the cost of buying jarred baby food that isn't terrifying and grody.

yeah agreed that it's worth it just because baby food is gross, even if you break even

I feel like baby food is a scam to charge a lot of money for cheaply made garbage no adult would eat

otm

also nothing wrong w a little texture and structure to one's food

Whoa that baby food thing looks p sweet. I can't waiting for Ivy to start eating food. She eats so much now and I can keep up with demand but it's exhausting sometimes.

Hurting that vomit story... I'm a touch emetophobic* and am ruing the day. I trust K is okay?

*ALTHOUGH about 10 minutes after I finally manage to shower on Sunday, Ivy spat up down my chest and into my bra (it's her signature move) and I haven't gotten around to bathing since. :/

Ivy goes to daycare for the first time today. Blarrrfghhcgkkllll

I also had milky vom down my cleavage today. Global baby conspiracy alert.

Oh Carl, good luck!

My finest moment was when I comedy-opened a bag of trail mix, sending nuts, raisins, and peanut butter chips everywhere, including down my bra, then the baby barfed down my cleavage, and when I was finally able to address my personal hygiene, I had a paste of smashed peanut butter chips and curdled milkpuke between my boobs.

MILF.

"paste of smashed peanut butter chips and curdled milkpuke between my boobs" is the actual second definition of MILF in merriam-webster i believe

IME to date it would make a good board description.

Ugh Ivy is with strangers and I'm at work. The teacher seemed really taken with her at least and Ivy seemed too interested in all the new input to care I was leaving. Sigh.

like always nothing is universal but Michael really likes his days at daycare and despite being bummed out about it initially we are really happy he is in there - one of the older infants almost toddlers has adopted him as his own baby, and at one point when i was grabbing his stuff michael started crying in one of the swings and the other kid toddled over, patted him on the arm, and then kissed him on the forehead. it was pretty awesome honestly.

most parents I know with kids in daycare say their kids like it. K likes her part-time thing a lot.

theres def something to be said abt being around your kid all the time, but the reality is that its stupid hard to do that these days, and socializing kids in a lot of different environments (and getting them their first few rounds of colds etc in the process) isnt such a bad thing really.

"one of the older infants almost toddlers has adopted him as his own baby, and at one point when i was grabbing his stuff michael started crying in one of the swings and the other kid toddled over, patted him on the arm, and then kissed him on the forehead"

STOP IT RIGHT NOW

at one point when i was grabbing his stuff michael started crying in one of the swings and the other kid toddled over, patted him on the arm, and then kissed him on the forehead.

Well, that made me a little teary. Not in a bad way - in an "I'm already a big ball of barely controlled emotions" way.

I think once I see her again and verify that she's well fed and clean and happy (not that I have any reason to think she won't be cared for!) I will be calmer. And we're able to swing just three days/week in daycare so I feel better about that, too.

Now, navigating the ins and outs of pumping at work is a whole new subject. Thank god we have a nicely outfitted "mother's room" here with a lock on the door, because the dress I wore is not as boob accessible as I thought so I ended up sitting around in my slip with one of those hands free pumping bras strapped on and feeling like the world's biggest doofus. Also managed to spill breast milk on my dress before going to a meeting. Yup.

skipped baby food altogether, just went from breastmilk to the gradual introduction of whatever we were eating (this was a different strategy than with our first kid) and it's worked out pretty well. although now he just wants to eat whatever's on our plate (his plate isn't good enough for him)

One of my favorite K memories will always be when we were sitting at an outside table at a fish restaurant on the tel aviv waterfront, and K started demanding "Lemon! Lemon!" and I finally just told H "Look, just give it to her. She'll realize what it tastes like and she won't want it. And the little bugger took the thing and started sucking on it and chewing it and going "Mmm!" in the most contented and delighted way.

I LOVED eating lemons when I was a kid.

I think I've read that babies'/toddlers' taste buds are still developing and strong flavors don't get quite the reaction they will get a year or two later. Our daughter once ate a whole bowl of pickled onions at a restaurant because she was enjoying our reaction and the laughter from surrounding tables...her diapers the next day were straight from hell.

I still eat lemons like that. Except I add a lot of salt.

in the northwest of Spain this summer I checked out the baby food aisle at the supermarket and the flavors were like cod, mackerel, and the like. that's a way to develop a love for seafood! my kids are a bit more ambiguous about fish (though we'll move to the south of France this summer for a year so I hope they acquire a taste for seafood, since we'll live like 1 mile from the Mediterranean)

I'll eat the damn peels with the lemon too. Not the seeds though, that's gross.