Breadmaking...

So, I'm hooked. I love making bread. The method outlined in Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day is fantastic. It is so easy a caveman... oh you get the picture. If you haven't checked this book out yet, please do. Follow this link to the JCLC catalog to put it on reserve or really, just go buy it. (They are all checked out anyway.) I promise you won't regret it.

I've make a few things from it including Whole Wheat Master Loaf, Soft Whole Wheat Sandwich Loaf, Avocado Guacamole Bread and another one I can't remember right now. The marvelous thing is that out of these batches of dough, I've made a multitude of things from artisan free form loaves and sandwich loaves to pizza crust to garlic rolls to a bog round flat loaf that I've been making focaccia sandwiches with.

The Avocado Guacamole was the best. Really good flavor which made it great for many things, breakfast toast with mozzarella cheese, dinner bread, etc. Anyway, please give this method a try. It is totally worth it.

Emmeline - 9 months

Well, Miss Emmeline has been out as long as she was in! I really can't believe it. She is growing up to be such a cute baby. Her biggest development this month is her appetite! She will eat anything, and I mean anything, that you feed her or put in front of her. I was a little worried that she would turn into a Cheerio, so we are working in a few other kinds of finger foods. Her daily food and milk/formula intake looks like this:

6:00 am Nurse
7:30 am 4 oz of fruit or applesauce with baby cereal with Cheerios after
8:15 am Nurse
10:45 am 4.5 oz. milk bottle and 4 oz. of pureed veggies or stage 2 fruit
1:45 pm 4.5 oz. milk bottle and 4 oz. of pureed fruit or stage 2 fruit
3:00 pm 4 oz formula bottle and puffs and cheerios
5:30 pm Nurse
6:00 pm 3-4 oz. of pureed veggies, an ounce of pureed meat, an ounce of avocado and an ounce of brown rice with diced peaches and Cheerios after
7:30 pm Nurse and bed
Usually she wakes to nurse between 2 am and 4 am, but sometimes she sleeps through.

Next week we are going to two 6 oz. bottles at daycare and upping her food some by adding some finger foods for her to have there. I think that I'll switch her over to stage 3 baby foods and chunkier home purees as well. I hope that she continues to be an adventurous eater!

Some milestones this month include incessant chatter. This child talks all the time! (I'm sure that isn't that much of a surprise if you know me.) She talks to us, to her friends at "school," to the dogs... all the time. She has really started to interact more with us, the kids in her class and, most hysterically, the dogs. Every morning she crawls over to the dogs and "hugs" them by pulling herself up to kneeling onto them and then flopping her head down on top of them. The grudgingly cooperate. The other afternoon she grabbed the other end of the toy Winni was playing with and started shaking it and laughing. I think she really enjoyed "playing" with her.

Emmeline also enjoys going outside, which is great because David and I do, too! Every afternoon she spends some time outside after we get home from work. The last few days we have gone to the track at Irondale Middle School to walk after she eats dinner and she enjoyed that (when she wasn't too sleepy).

She is developing a sense of humor as well. She laughs when we laugh, even if she doesn't know why. Also, she thinks it is super-funny to put her pacifier in your mouth. Much hilarity will ensue. Just don't try to take it from her, because that is clearly NOT funny.

Here are some items from the babycenter.com milestone chart. She is right on track developmentally, and slightly advanced in the social aspects, I think.

• Stands while holding onto something

• Jabbers or combines syllables

• Eats with fingers

• Bangs objects together

• Plays patty-cake and peek-a-boo (she doesn't do too well with the "roll-it-up" portion of patty cake, but she gets the rest)

• Says "mama" and "dada" to the correct parent (with absolutely no regularity, and sometimes not at all)

• Waves goodbye (or sometimes, if she is really feeling fancy, she claps goodbye)

• Picks things up with pincer grasp (oh, Cheerios, how much you have taught us)

• Crawls well, with belly off the ground

• Understands "no" and simple instructions (albeit she doesn't follow those instructions)

We do love her so!

Making baby food...

So I've been making Emmeline's food for a few weeks and we both are enjoying it. She still eats some store-bought foods, but a lot is home pureed fruits and veggies.

So far we've tried sweet potatoes, butternut squash, yellow squash, broccoli, green beans, avocado, chicken, peaches, blueberries, pears and bananas. She has loved it all, as you can see in that picture! I've also gotten a stash of food cubes stored in the freezer, which is the only way a working person could handle doing this, in my opinion. I try to do two to four ice cube trays worth every weekend.
Next up, English peas and more green beans!

Spring...

has sprung.

The time change happened last weekend, but it has been dreary and cold most of the week. It finally warmed up on Friday and we all went out into the yard to play.

So nice.

Emmeline - 8 months

I can't believe that it is time for another update. Emmeline has had a big month. She moved up a class at daycare, which I think accellerated her physical development. Her new class doesn't have any "containers" like excersaucers or bouncy seats. It is just a free for all baby-pile and a toy box. I was very nervous at first because when she moved up, Emmeline wasn't very mobile yet, only crawling backward, so I wondered how she would do. After a few days of adjustment, she adjusted very well. By the second week she was crawling and playing just fine. I think that it is good for her to learn how to play with the other children in her class. Also, she was getting very attached to one of her teachers in the other class. She likes her new teachers, but doesn't seem to cling as much to them as she did to Miss Amy.

Another change for this month was the addition of more foods. I've started making some of her baby foods and she likes them, once she gets used to them. So far I have the following stock in the freezer: green beans, sweet potatoes, butternut squash, bananas and blueberries. I have some brown rice and some peaches to puree one night this week. All of this eating seems to agree with her. I weighed her last night and she weighs 17 lbs. 13 oz., up 9 oz. in just a week! I couldn't believe it. Before that, she had only gained 4 ounces in two weeks.

We have added breakfast and dinner into the mix last week, which probably accounts for the weight gain. She has home-pureed fruits with baby cereal for breakfast, store bought baby-fruit for a morning snack, store-bought baby veggies for lunch, puffs for an afternoon snack, and home-pureed veggies with a little protein for dinner. She nurses four times a day and gets two milk bottles and one formula bottle during the week. On the weekends she just nurses on demand, but her food schedule stays the same. I was hesitant about adding formula, but she takes it fine at daycare. (She won't touch it from me, David or my mom who keeps her on Fridays. Oh well...)

She loves the dogs so much. When we get her home everyday, she kicks and kicks until she sees the dogs - then she laughs and wants to get down on the floor with them. She and Ginny are bestest friends, and Emmeline thinks that Winni is hysterical, probably because Winni smiles all the time.

New milestones this month are:
waves hello and goodbye
reapeats ma-ma and sometimes says it (It's more like maaaaaaaaaaaaaa when she wants something, but it is a start)
smacks and says "mmmmmmm" when she wants to eat
mouths bye-bye sometimes
chatters on and on, but we have no idea what she is saying
understands "no" and HATES it
crawls really well
pulls to standing
stands for a couple seconds on her own
uses pincher grasp
feeds herself puffs (really she just puts everything in her mouth hoping that it is puffs)
bangs things together and on the ground (and thinks that really funny)
"claps," but sometimes misses
still loves peek-a-boo

We are having some difficulties sleeping again. Right now, I think it is because she is sick with a cold, so I hope that it goes away on its own. She is getting up at least twice at night to nurse, and usually has trouble getting back to sleep once and is up for about 45 minutes to an hour. I know that she can sleep through from about 7 pm-5 am (with a dream feed around 10:30 pm) because she has done it a few times, but I think I'll wait until she is feeling better to work on any sleep re-training. Maybe (hopefully) it will work out on its own.

Anyway, as always, we love her so. I cannot believe how easily and well she melds into our family. Her little personality comes through more and more everyday. She is bright, happy, inquisitive, darling, loving and beautiful - inside and out. Sweet Emmeline, we love her so.