Sudden Improvement!

Yesterday I made something that required egg whites which left me with a couple of homeless yolks. So, remembering that egg yolks are something a baby Maxine's age can try to eat, I made her scrambled yolks with a tiny bit of salt, pepper and chili powder. I tasted first. They were notably delicious. She tried them. She liked them. And she did not choke on them. So I put several tiny pieces on her tray and let her feed herself. She did this successfully for about 20 minutes while I finished what I was baking. I was thrilled. She really liked egg yolks!

So, suddenly I have hope that Maxine is going to get pretty good at eating semi-solid foods. Something I can't quite control yet is the way she feeds herself a bottle. Her new game is this: I hand her a bottle, she sips it for about a minute, then she pulls it out of her mouth, turns it upside down and bounces it on her tray, like a bingo marker, getting milk all over the tray and her clothes. I tell her not to do it, she giggles. I give her another chance, she does it again. I put the bottle away and say, "All done baba." She giggles and goes on with her life. It seems she only drinks a bottle when she's really super hungry or wants comfort from falling and bumping her head (but she only gets a post-injury bottle if I know it's been a while since she's had one. The typical post-injury comfort is lots of snuggles). I know this is the age to introduce a sippy cup but I tried that when she turned 9 months and she was obviously not ready for it. Now that she is 10 months+ I could introduce it again but I see how she plays with her bottles now and I don't think I should. I don't know.

Raquel was with me in the kitchen for a while yesterday while Maxine ate her egg yolks. She was helping me make cookies. I think she looks very mature here in this picture, scraping ingredients off the mixer attachment...

Maxine: 10 Months + 1 Week

I cannot believe Maxine is going to turn 1 year old next month. I'm so thankful she has been healthy and normal all this time. Besides her bout with teething at the age of 5 months, she has been very pleasant and easily entertained. It is usually pretty easy to put her to bed, although lately when I put her in bed she gets right up and stands holding onto the crib rail, jumping and talking it up. Then she eventually gets tired, whines a little bit (I listen from another room) and falls asleep. When I'm sure she's sound asleep, I quietly enter her room and cover her up with her blankets.

Her Uncle James is hardly ever around but just last Saturday he came over and played with Maxine for a while and we both heard her say her first word: "Ooh-ka". I must explain... When Raquel was a toddler, she used to call James "Ooh-ka James" as she could not pronounce the word "Uncle". We all started calling him "Ooh-ka" on a regular basis. Now, when he comes over, I tell Maxine, "Look, it's Ooh-ka!". So, last weekend, I said this to her and she said, "n-KA!" James said, "Did you hear that?!" So we tested her by repeating "Ooh-ka" and she'd respond each time with, "n-KA!" It was so funny! But the thing is, now she's saying, "Ka!" all the time when she tries to say something. I think she liked the excited response she got from us when we thought she was trying to say James' nickname and now she just uses "Ka!" for almost everything. It's still something. Now that I know she can recognize certain words and sounds, I am always annunciating key words, like, "bath", "daddy" and, "night-night" in hopes she will try to copy me.

Maxine seems to have a sensitive gag reflex and still cannot eat solid food, not even semi-solid food, like a tiny piece of bread, without gagging or choking a little. At this age, Raquel was already picking up half-pieces of Cheerios and feeding them to herself without a problem. Maxine does do the pincer grasp and is able to pick up very tiny objects but she's definitely not ready for the responsibility of feeding herself with her fingers. So Maxine and I just practice a little everyday with semi-solid food. She has 6 teeth and does chew with them--I really don't know why she so often gags/chokes. It makes me think of when she was a newborn and scared me so often by choking while breastfeeding or bottle feeding. Makes me wonder...

Maxine's New Skills

I ruined my camera's memory card and have no new pictures to show off. But Maxine is making a lot of progress and I thought I'd share her new "skills".
Maxine has started to realize that just because something disappears from her view doesn't mean it isn't there. If you stand in her way of the thing she's trying to see she'll crane her neck to look around you. It is pretty cute.
She is such a good eater! She still loves the homemade baby food, sweet potatoes being at the top of her list. When Raquel was this age (almost 8 months) I don't think she had a big appetite but then I was feeding her Gerber, not tasty, homemade, unwatered-down food.
Maxine is still not really crawling but she does get around the living room quite well by a mixture of dragging/pulling and crawling. She can also balance her body on one side with one arm in the air and one on the ground to steady herself--this is the precursor to sitting up on her own with the next move in the sequence being using that arm on the ground to push herself up to sit.
She is ultra sensitive in two ways. 1) Music makes her want to bob and bounce, whether she hears it on tv or one of us singing to her. When I sing to her she stares at me like I'm an angel or something. Her favorite song, the first song I ever sang to her inside OR outside the womb, is My Bunny Lies Over the Ocean. 2) She LOVES a good back massage. Her eyes will roll back in her head when you massage her back. I'm guessing her little muscles get sore from learning to crawl. She also responds similarly to light touches on her legs, arms and face. At the mall yesterday, she fell asleep sitting on my lap while I ran my fingers up and down her left leg. I couldn't see her face but her head slowly fell forward and Jose looked and saw she was falling asleep. So cute!
Her favorite tv show is Blue's Clues. It really gets her attention.
She can say "dadadadada", "tss", "babababa" and "ah-ba" but I don't think she's actually trying to speak english yet.
When I'm trying to comb her hair, she tilts her head all the way back to see what I'm doing. So I usually give her something to play with while I do this.
Sometimes she puts her hand in the way when I'm changing her diaper. So I also give her something to occupy her hands when I do this.
She likes to scratch everything, even her own tummy. I am teaching her the meaning of "soft" by placing her hand on my face and saying "soft" while running her hand down my cheek softly.
When I'm feeding her she thinks its fun to spray food out of her mouth by making a "tss" sound after I put food in there. So, she is now learning the meaning of the word, "NO", hahaha. When I say "NO" I have to make sure my face has a certain serious expression, otherwise she thinks I'm being funny and she'll just laugh. :)
That's all for now. Thanks for reading.

Maxine's Eating A Lot

When I got the idea to go to a farmers market today it was already too late. They were closed. So I went to Vons instead. I bought bananas, a big yam, an avocado, a butternut squash, a fennel bulb, carrots and Jonagold Apples to try and make more baby food. Everything is done except the yam, meaning, everything got pureed but the yam. It's cooked and waiting for me but I'm too tired now! I needed to make a lot today because of how fast my supply is dwindling.

It turns out bananas and avocados are soft enough raw that you do not need to cook them at all to mash them. I made a banana-cado mash with a fork. It looked like a lot even though I only used about 1/5 of the avocado and 1/4 of a large banana. Maxine loved it! I tasted it, too, just to make sure why she liked it. She ate so much of it that I could only fill two wells in the ice cube tray with this mixture. Yes, it will probably brown a little but the flavor will still be there so I'm okay with that.

I found a site I like and that I referred to today specifically for the banana-cado recipe. The site is called weelicious. The layout is simple and the recipes look great.

The squash was a big one, I guess. I got SO much food out of it! I did one puree of plain butternut squash, one with carrots, fennel and squash and one with banana and squash. The colors are so pretty. Maxine didn't care for the plain batch, which is why I started mixing it with other stuff. She liked the mixed batches. She was my little taste tester but I tasted it all, too.

I also made apple sauce good enough to serve for dinner... to adults! All I did was add a bit of cinnamon. It came out so good.

I'm positive Maxine enjoys eating my baby food. She eats so much more now than before. It's quite surprising how pushy she gets when I feed her! She wants me to hurry up with the next spoonful and there is still food in her mouth. I'm pretty flattered.

Something interesting about fennel: it can relieve your baby's gassiness, it aides in digestion and can calm down a teething baby.

My First Homemade Baby Food

It was scary. That's why it took me so long to get started. I meant to start doing this a couple months ago. For one thing, I had never used a food processor before--Have you seen those blades? Secondly, I'm a little afraid of produce I buy at the store and wish I had my own garden. Third, foods considered safe for babies are different depending on who you talk to or what you read--this is actually the most frustrating part. The girls' pediatrician warned me not to give strawberries to Maxine, that babies shouldn't have strawberries until they're 12 months old, yet, look at the baby food at the store and you see "banana strawberry" or similar. Huh?!? And then I was looking at wholesomebabyfood.com and it said that carrots and spinach (two things I was going to puree today) have too many nitrates in them and babies shouldn't eat them until after a certain age. Maxine LOVES carrots from the jar! Why would Gerber put unsafe food in a jar for babies to eat? I have decided I don't fully trust this neurotic site but will look around for more conclusive information about their claims before I mash up my carrots and spinach.

Today I made two batches of baby food: peaches and sweet potatoes. I used only one peach and one pretty big sweet tater. I steamed the peach and baked the tater. After pureeing the sweet potato, it looked and tasted so good (that little tiny bit I got on my finger) that I wished I had bought more so I could have my own all mashed up like velvet! It was very starchy so I added to the processor a little of the cooled boiled peach water. I'm very happy with how it came out. The peach didn't come out like velvet but it doesn't have the starch that the potato has and I figure that has a lot to do with the resulting texture. I spooned both foods into one ice cube tray which I filled completely. After the cubes freeze they will be popped into freezer bags and stored.

Maxine has been in a bad mood since last night. I have a feeling more teeth are coming in. It is so tiring trying to cheer her up and more difficult when Raquel is testing my patience at the same time. I have mommy burnout today for sure.

Pretty Baby Things

(vintage smocked dress hand-me-down. the decoration is little pink hens)

In the middle of reorganizing some of the girls' things, I noticed Maxine has a terrible habit of growing out of fancy baby accessories before having a chance to wear them. Maybe, if there is no occasion to wear fancy things, the occasion should simply be a photoshoot? I'll have to remember that from now on. We've been given so many nice gifts and hand-me-downs, I feel they deserve a little archiving, at least. Here, I have taken some photos of special things Maxine will never or may never wear. (leather boots, a hand-me-down from a friend who got them as a gift from actress Abigail Breslin)(another vintage smocked dress from a friend. still with tags) (suede moccasins from a thoughtful Starbucks customer)These little red numbers are actually Raquel's first Christmas shoes. I bought them second-hand on ebay when she was 4 months old especially for Christmas. I have always loved them. Maxine wore them in the mall Santa picture but they were a little too big for her at the time. They are special and I will never get rid of them. I considered bronzing them but I decided bronzing is just for boring old white baby shoes, not pretty bright red ones.

Well, these are only a small part of our stash of fancy baby things. Maybe some day I will find a way to display them on the walls in the girls' room.

Almost Crawling

Before Maxine's six-month physical exam last week, I was worried there might be something wrong with her, developmentally, because she wasn't sitting on her own or trying to crawl. All the baby literature I have was telling me she should be doing these things, or at least the sitting part. Our doctor said she's totally fine. And even though it doesn't matter how fast Raquel was at most things, it is normal for us as parents to compare the girls to each other.

The pre-cursor to crawling is usually the "Bucking Bronco". A baby will get on all fours and just bounce without going anywhere, so I've read. Turns out this is true for Maxine. When she got her energy back after being sick she started doing the Bucking Bronco. I was happy to see this and it was so cute to watch!

This morning she looks like she's starting to crawl! This is happening quicker than I thought it would. She starts by putting her palms on the floor with her fingers kinda pointing in towards each hand. This is a brand new development, as before she would only make fists. Then she pulls her body forward with her arms, bends one of her legs and tries to get on her knee, trying to lift herself and move. I'm sitting here watching her do this and cheering her on! I'm so glad my baby has muscles!

Speaking of comparing the girls, Raquel had the strength to crawl but chose not to at this age. I have a picture of her doing the Spider pose at 6 months old but she did not use this as her form of transportation. Instead, she would get herself to a piece of furniture, pull up and cruise (standing up and walking while holding onto furniture). She didn't choose to crawl until shortly before she started to walk. I think she didn't like the feeling of carpet or hard floors on her knees.
When Raquel was still a baby, Jose and I used to hypothesize about our next child. We have always said, "Our next kid is going to have to work hard at things while Raquel will be a natural at everything without much effort." We mean in life, not just in babyhood.

Maxine's First Tooth

(1st time in high chair and 1st taste of egg yolk)

Wednesday morning Maxine woke up and dry-heaved. I immediately started her on Pedialyte and no formula. She developed a low fever that lasted through the night but never vomitted again. I'm puzzled as to why she vomitted in the first place. She was due for immunizations but we had to postpone that 'til next week because they don't give shots to sick babies. I'm anxious to speak to the doctor about Maxine's seemingly slow development.

Maxine's painful teething process has finally produced a tooth. It's on the bottom left. The one next to it is about to pop up, too! Here is a face she makes when her mouth is bothering her:

Teething seems to happen at night. She gets pretty upset and won't go to sleep until after 11pm. It gets pretty monotonous trying to comfort her and my arm gets pretty tired. Here she is looking sleepy but fighting sleep:

If she lets me, I will get a picture of the tooth and update this post when I do. She doesn't like me looking around in her mouth.

Jose's Day Off

Yes, Jose actually took an entire day off today. What a nice Sunday it was for us. He made a big pot of coffee, read the paper outside in this perfect weather we've been enjoying for over a week now. Then he kicked back and watched both of the football games he had been so amped up about. And his team won. Go Cards!

Raquel left for Grandma Rosamaria's house shortly before noon and is spending the night there. You have never heard our house so peaceful!

One of the benefits Jose gets for working at Macaroni Grill is a 50% discount at any restaurant his company owns. We went to Chili's for dinner and used his discount. What a difference it makes! We rarely go out to eat anymore so it kinda felt like a special occasion and without Raquel there with us, there was a lot of silent moments, both of us not knowing what exactly to talk about. Pretty pathetic, huh? Maybe not if you know Raquel.

*****

Maxine is going to be 6 months old in a few days. I've been reading about 6-month old babies and what they should/might be able to do, such as sit up and/or say "bababababa...". She isn't strong enough to sit on her own yet so I have started training her by propping her up with my hands or my feet or a pillow. It's hard because she really likes to do this rocking back and forth thing all the time, so when she's seated, she just flies backward (and I catch her). Some babies at this age are beginning to crawl. Maxine just rolls around and ends up moving herself about the floor quite a bit. Sometimes I put my hands on the bottom of her feet so she has something to push off from.

I have pictures of Raquel at this age sitting on her own and standing on the sofa, holding the arm with one hand and her bottle in another. I can't imagine Maxine doing that now! She seems far from it. Of course every baby is unique but I still can't help but feel at fault for Maxine's, uh, lack of strength. Don't get me wrong, I am in no hurry for her to grow up. I love having a snuggly little baby! I love having someone to hold who is so small and quiet and listens to everything I say and loves to hear me sing. I'm telling you, when I sing her to sleep, she is captivated. I just don't want to hold her back from her capabilities.

See my feet holding her up?

Maxine at 3 Months

Jose got me a new camera, yay! He says it doesn't look "cool" because it's bulkier than the other digital cameras we've had. I'm ok with that.

Maxine is 3 months old now. She plays with her hands sometimes like this, not able to grab anything on purpose, yet. She likes to just look at them.

She fell down ever so slowly.

Then I picked her up again and she continued to study her hands.

Man, I love her feetsies! She looks at those, too. When she starts grasping things I'm pretty sure she'll go for those toes as soon as she can.

What else does Maxine do? Laugh a lot at Raquel and a little at Daddy (never at Mommy). Raquel can make this kid laugh like nothing and it is so fun to watch. She's also very talkative. We have most of our conversations during a diaper change when we're looking right at each other, so many different oohs and wees. In the bath she smiles at Patito the rubber duck and Raquel's bath toys (mostly old My Little Ponies). She really doesn't like to be left alone so we end up carrying her around a lot but sometimes I just have to put her down and block out the whining and protesting.

Jose and I are so lucky to have our little girls.

12 Weeks Old Today

Today, Maxine is 12 weeks old. She bats at objects with her hands. She looks at her feet and hands. And she took a shower today with Daddy for the first time since Mommy was still too sick (had a stomach flu yesterday). She loved it. I have started blowing raspberries on her tummy and she almost laughed at me today when I did it. Almost.

Maxine at 6 Weeks of Age

This week Maxine has started to really try to verbally communicate with us. It is so much fun to listen to her different little sounds! She says, "coo", "goo", "a-goo" and "oh" in her soft little voice. She even giggles some times. I have read that even at this age, babies know that a conversation is a give and take situation, that people take turns talking and listening. So I'll say something and give her a chance to respond. It takes her a minute to get going but once she starts she can really hold her own and seems to get a kick out of it. Babies want to do what everyone else is doing, they want to be in on the conversation and talk like we do and you can really see this in Maxine now.

Her face has become more expressive. You can pick up on how happy she is to see you and you can tell who she recognizes and trusts. It shows in her entire face! You can feel the connection she is trying to make with you. In these pictures below she was talking to me :) Check out her mouth forming different shapes...

She makes these faces and sounds and I melt.