Like a waterfall in slow motion, Part One
3 years ago
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Walking Part II
After taking 3 or 4 steps a few times on Tuesday, Micah continued the trend on Wednesday, and even started to add steps. By Thursday, he had walked across the living room! He is still crawling more than walking, but we definitely have a walker on our hands. I finally got a video, but he would only walk for the video if I taunted him with my ipod.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Walking!!
I can't believe it - Micah is finally walking! He has been so close for so long, and we've seen him take a single step here and there for a couple of months now, but no real progress. Since his birthday, he has started standing up just from the floor without any assistance or holding on to any furniture. The past week or so, he has gotten so strong that he could bend over, pick up a toy, stand back up again, and stand and shake or play with the toy. I've known he has been so close, but I just wasn't sure he would really get there.
Today, we were home with him all day (except for class). He kept getting this look like he was about to take a step, but at the last minute, he'd sit down. In the evening, we spent some time "walking" together and Micah would just hold my one hand. And then I started to encourage him. I got him standing on his own in the middle of the floor, and I stood just out of reach, holding something he wanted. He would lean and try and grab it, and after a bunch of different attempts, he took 3 steps and then grabbed me. I was able to get him to repeat this 3 or 4 times, and then he did it a few times on his own without prompting. I just can't believe it!
Today, we were home with him all day (except for class). He kept getting this look like he was about to take a step, but at the last minute, he'd sit down. In the evening, we spent some time "walking" together and Micah would just hold my one hand. And then I started to encourage him. I got him standing on his own in the middle of the floor, and I stood just out of reach, holding something he wanted. He would lean and try and grab it, and after a bunch of different attempts, he took 3 steps and then grabbed me. I was able to get him to repeat this 3 or 4 times, and then he did it a few times on his own without prompting. I just can't believe it!
Monday, January 4, 2010
Turkey Burgers
One of my friends always seems to post recipes and demonstrations of the food she makes for her daughter, so this is my feeble first attempt to give it a try. Naturally, I forgot to take pictures of every step along the way, so it is quite light on the pictures. You'll just have to rely on my recipe and description!!
This is the 2nd time I've made turkey burgers for Micah. I actually am a vegetarian, so I have no idea how these taste, but Micah seems to love them, and Elliot says they are delicious. You could make these as a family dinner sometime, but I like having them around on-hand in my freezer because they are inexpensive, healthy, and I can pop one in the microwave and heat it up as needed in just one minute! We find this recipe quite inexpensive to make, and I think it is simple, too. We always use organic ingredients (meats and all the veggies) and in our area, we have been finding that Trader Joe's has some of the best prices for organic food, especially the meats. We have also had success with the "house" brand organics at the leading grocery store chains.
Ingredients:
1 lb ground turkey
1/2 vidalia onion, finely diced
1-2 tsps minced garlic
1 egg
1/3 c. bread crumbs
1/2 c. grated zucchini (can substitute other veggies - I did it once with spinach, and I bet you could use pureed baby food, too, and I'm thinking about trying it with some tomatoes)
Take the ground turkey and place in a mixing bowl. Finely dice about 1/2 a vidalia onion. For the little babies, it is important to really make sure you have a fine dice - you want the onion to sort of disappear into the burger and just slide down their throat. I picked vidalia onions because they have a sweet flavor - they add some spice without being too strong. You could use a regular yellow onion instead, but use cautiously!!
Next, add about 1-2 tsps of minced garlic - Micah definitely likes the flavor, and you can go heavier as your baby develops a taste for spices. I'm lazy and buy my garlic pre-diced, but you could probably just use a garlic press with 1 or 2 cloves of garlic, or hand mince a clove or two. Feel free to add other seasonings to taste - whatever flavors you think will appeal to you and your baby! I have one friend that puts sage, basil and thyme into everything.
The next step is to prepare and shred the zucchini. The easiest way to prepare zucchini is to slice it in half, the long way:
Then, you take a spoon, and scrape out the seeds/pulp in the center. The zucchini will have a half-moon shape (or a c-shape) when you are done scraping. I scrape out the seeds/pulp because the texture is really not pleasant, and it does not add much flavor.
Next, grate the zucchini into the bowl. It may only take 1/2 a zucchini to get about 1/2 cup. You can feel free to add more or less zucchini as you see fit, and you can always substitute different vegetables. I have also made these with spinach instead of the zucchini, but any kind of squash, pumpkin or carrots or even broccoli could work just fine. Feel free to be creative! I am certain you could put pureed baby food in here, too (or instead of the grated vegetables). I like to grate the veggies because Micah really enjoys the textures right now. Adding the veggies is an easy way to sneak in some additional nutrition, especially now that Micah is getting picky about eating vegetables directly.
At this point, I add about 1/3 c bread crumbs and 1 egg. I find that the egg and bread crumbs help bind everything together and give it a good texture, but you can certainly try to leave it all out. I was told that after 8 months, we were allowed to give Micah things that contained egg whites, but we couldn't give him a straight egg white. I'm not sure why that matters, but pancakes and bread with eggs and burgers with eggs mixed in were all on the "okay" list. If you are nervous about using the whites, you could just put in the yolk. Micah was probably at least 9 months old before we were really giving him protein on a regular basis, but turkey burgers and hamburgers were a great texture for him as we started introducing meats and "table" food instead of baby food.
I put it on one of those burger pans - with the drip pan underneath and the slotted top. You can make the burger any size you feel appropriate. The first time, I divided the mix up into 16 burgers, but this last time, I only made 12. I am thinking that as Micah eats more, next time around, I may only make 8-10. I bake them in the oven at 350 for about 30 minutes or so. It is a good idea to flip them as they start to brown on one side. You can usually tell they are ready by splitting one in half to be sure they are cooked all the way through. If you are at all nervous, you can always take a meat thermometer, and poultry is considered "cooked" when it hits around 160-165. The meat will continue to cook for a few minutes after you remove it from the oven, so once it clears 160, it is good to go.
Here is what mine look like after they are cooked:
I then let them cool, then individually wrap and freeze them. You can freeze them on a cookie sheet and put them in a plastic bag once they are frozen - that way they won't all stick together. I take them out one at a time when I want to give one to Micah, and they heat up in about 1 minute in the microwave. Any longer than that, they get too hot and we have to cool them down before we can feed him, but 1 minute makes them warm all the way through, and not hot.
Lately, Micah has gotten a bit picky, so he doesn't always like to eat these plain. Tonight, we discovered that a bit of marinara sauce on top makes them even more delicious - as far as Micah is concerned. These turkey burgers have been great for us - we can almost always count on him gobbling them up whenever we serve one, and it comes complete with some built-in veggies. It feels like a very complete meal.
This is the 2nd time I've made turkey burgers for Micah. I actually am a vegetarian, so I have no idea how these taste, but Micah seems to love them, and Elliot says they are delicious. You could make these as a family dinner sometime, but I like having them around on-hand in my freezer because they are inexpensive, healthy, and I can pop one in the microwave and heat it up as needed in just one minute! We find this recipe quite inexpensive to make, and I think it is simple, too. We always use organic ingredients (meats and all the veggies) and in our area, we have been finding that Trader Joe's has some of the best prices for organic food, especially the meats. We have also had success with the "house" brand organics at the leading grocery store chains.
Ingredients:
1 lb ground turkey
1/2 vidalia onion, finely diced
1-2 tsps minced garlic
1 egg
1/3 c. bread crumbs
1/2 c. grated zucchini (can substitute other veggies - I did it once with spinach, and I bet you could use pureed baby food, too, and I'm thinking about trying it with some tomatoes)
Take the ground turkey and place in a mixing bowl. Finely dice about 1/2 a vidalia onion. For the little babies, it is important to really make sure you have a fine dice - you want the onion to sort of disappear into the burger and just slide down their throat. I picked vidalia onions because they have a sweet flavor - they add some spice without being too strong. You could use a regular yellow onion instead, but use cautiously!!
Next, add about 1-2 tsps of minced garlic - Micah definitely likes the flavor, and you can go heavier as your baby develops a taste for spices. I'm lazy and buy my garlic pre-diced, but you could probably just use a garlic press with 1 or 2 cloves of garlic, or hand mince a clove or two. Feel free to add other seasonings to taste - whatever flavors you think will appeal to you and your baby! I have one friend that puts sage, basil and thyme into everything.
The next step is to prepare and shred the zucchini. The easiest way to prepare zucchini is to slice it in half, the long way:
Then, you take a spoon, and scrape out the seeds/pulp in the center. The zucchini will have a half-moon shape (or a c-shape) when you are done scraping. I scrape out the seeds/pulp because the texture is really not pleasant, and it does not add much flavor.Next, grate the zucchini into the bowl. It may only take 1/2 a zucchini to get about 1/2 cup. You can feel free to add more or less zucchini as you see fit, and you can always substitute different vegetables. I have also made these with spinach instead of the zucchini, but any kind of squash, pumpkin or carrots or even broccoli could work just fine. Feel free to be creative! I am certain you could put pureed baby food in here, too (or instead of the grated vegetables). I like to grate the veggies because Micah really enjoys the textures right now. Adding the veggies is an easy way to sneak in some additional nutrition, especially now that Micah is getting picky about eating vegetables directly.
At this point, I add about 1/3 c bread crumbs and 1 egg. I find that the egg and bread crumbs help bind everything together and give it a good texture, but you can certainly try to leave it all out. I was told that after 8 months, we were allowed to give Micah things that contained egg whites, but we couldn't give him a straight egg white. I'm not sure why that matters, but pancakes and bread with eggs and burgers with eggs mixed in were all on the "okay" list. If you are nervous about using the whites, you could just put in the yolk. Micah was probably at least 9 months old before we were really giving him protein on a regular basis, but turkey burgers and hamburgers were a great texture for him as we started introducing meats and "table" food instead of baby food.
I put it on one of those burger pans - with the drip pan underneath and the slotted top. You can make the burger any size you feel appropriate. The first time, I divided the mix up into 16 burgers, but this last time, I only made 12. I am thinking that as Micah eats more, next time around, I may only make 8-10. I bake them in the oven at 350 for about 30 minutes or so. It is a good idea to flip them as they start to brown on one side. You can usually tell they are ready by splitting one in half to be sure they are cooked all the way through. If you are at all nervous, you can always take a meat thermometer, and poultry is considered "cooked" when it hits around 160-165. The meat will continue to cook for a few minutes after you remove it from the oven, so once it clears 160, it is good to go.
Here is what mine look like after they are cooked:
I then let them cool, then individually wrap and freeze them. You can freeze them on a cookie sheet and put them in a plastic bag once they are frozen - that way they won't all stick together. I take them out one at a time when I want to give one to Micah, and they heat up in about 1 minute in the microwave. Any longer than that, they get too hot and we have to cool them down before we can feed him, but 1 minute makes them warm all the way through, and not hot.
Lately, Micah has gotten a bit picky, so he doesn't always like to eat these plain. Tonight, we discovered that a bit of marinara sauce on top makes them even more delicious - as far as Micah is concerned. These turkey burgers have been great for us - we can almost always count on him gobbling them up whenever we serve one, and it comes complete with some built-in veggies. It feels like a very complete meal.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Miscellaneous Stories
Micah has truly become a picky eater. When he was first starting out with food, he seemed to love everything! I was so excited that he would eat veggies and a wide variety of food. Recently, however, we have not been so lucky. He will consistently eat cheese, bananas, pears, applesauce, crackers, and veggie burgers. He seems to hate pasta and any kind of melon. He will love something one meal, and then throw it on the floor the next time we give it to him. I cannot tell if he is disliking the food, or if this is a way of expressing a mood (like he isn't feeling turkey burgers tonight). I sure hope it isn't my fault - maybe I got lazy about giving him a wide variety of food? Recently, however, we might have discovered a "secret weapon" - marinara sauce. Apparently, everything tastes better (and is definitely messier) with marinara sauce. I'm thinking he might just prefer more seasoning on his food, so we are going to give that a try.
Micah is not walking yet. We've been so certain he has been on the verge of walking for so long, but now I'm not so certain. He cruises everywhere, and he can "walk" as long as he holds a hand or touches a piece of furniture. We have definitely been seeing him take a single step now and then for the last 6 weeks or so, but I don't think this counts as walking. He has been standing up on his own (pushing up from the floor without holding on to furniture or people) since his first birthday. He seems to be strong enough to even hold and shake toys while he is standing, and he can bend over, pick something up off the floor and stand back up again without falling over. Part of me thinks he already can walk, he just hasn't realized it yet. He has also recently fallen in love with his walker toy - I think he spends more time dragging it than anything else, but he keeps reminding me of the old ladies with the granny carts.
We've been working on getting Micah to use a sippy cup for about 6 months now. Back in July and August, he was doing really well. But then he got sick and stopped taking all sippy cups and bottles, and it has been a battle since then. We've tried all different kinds of sippy cups - soft tops, bottle tops, straw tops, hard tops...and all he'll do is take a few sips and throw them on the floor. We've been trying to wean him off the bottle, but because his weight is so low, I've been afraid to cut him off the bottle cold turkey yet. Our little man is STUBBORN!!
Micah is not a boy of many teeth. He got his first 2 teeth back in October/November just before he turned 11 months old. A few weeks later, the doctor told us his top two teeth were on the verge of breaking through. All we know is that you can actually see the white teeth just below the gum, but they refuse to break through!! They've been sitting there for over 6 weeks now, and I'm not sure they (or any other teeth) intend to grow.
Micah has recently determined that everything is a phone. As my grandmother's dementia worsened, she started to confuse the remote control and the phone. Every night, Grammy would call my mom up and tell her that the remote wasn't working. My mom would explain to her that she had to point it at the tv, enter in the channel (she usually told her 24) and then wait for the channel to change. My grandmother would say "okay" and seconds later... you could hear the phone beeping and then my grandmother saying it hadn't worked. My mom would again explain that she was using the phone not the remote, and half the nights my mom ended up driving over there to fix the tv. We even went so far as creating labels for the phone and tv ... but it didn't seem to help. I tell this story because I was hysterically laughing remembering all this stuff the first time Micah picked up the remote and held it to his ear like a telephone. We joked that he was taking after his great-grandmother. Since then, Micah likes to treat everything as a phone...puzzle pieces, remotes, toys...it really doesn't matter. If you say to him "where is the phone" or "say hello" he grabs whatever he can and holds it to his ear. It is clearly adorable - and he obviously understands the concept of phone, he just hasn't figured out that only certain things are phones.
Micah's other favorite habit is drumming. He likes to bang/drum on EVERYTHING. My parents want to buy him a drum set...I think we are in BIG trouble!!
For his birthday, one of my friends bought him a singing donkey. He has loved this toy from the beginning, but he has recently figured out how to push the red button on the donkey's leg and make it sing. He could spend all day turning it on and off.
And some video of Micah "playing catch" and showing off a few other tricks:
Micah is not walking yet. We've been so certain he has been on the verge of walking for so long, but now I'm not so certain. He cruises everywhere, and he can "walk" as long as he holds a hand or touches a piece of furniture. We have definitely been seeing him take a single step now and then for the last 6 weeks or so, but I don't think this counts as walking. He has been standing up on his own (pushing up from the floor without holding on to furniture or people) since his first birthday. He seems to be strong enough to even hold and shake toys while he is standing, and he can bend over, pick something up off the floor and stand back up again without falling over. Part of me thinks he already can walk, he just hasn't realized it yet. He has also recently fallen in love with his walker toy - I think he spends more time dragging it than anything else, but he keeps reminding me of the old ladies with the granny carts.
We've been working on getting Micah to use a sippy cup for about 6 months now. Back in July and August, he was doing really well. But then he got sick and stopped taking all sippy cups and bottles, and it has been a battle since then. We've tried all different kinds of sippy cups - soft tops, bottle tops, straw tops, hard tops...and all he'll do is take a few sips and throw them on the floor. We've been trying to wean him off the bottle, but because his weight is so low, I've been afraid to cut him off the bottle cold turkey yet. Our little man is STUBBORN!!
Micah is not a boy of many teeth. He got his first 2 teeth back in October/November just before he turned 11 months old. A few weeks later, the doctor told us his top two teeth were on the verge of breaking through. All we know is that you can actually see the white teeth just below the gum, but they refuse to break through!! They've been sitting there for over 6 weeks now, and I'm not sure they (or any other teeth) intend to grow.
Micah has recently determined that everything is a phone. As my grandmother's dementia worsened, she started to confuse the remote control and the phone. Every night, Grammy would call my mom up and tell her that the remote wasn't working. My mom would explain to her that she had to point it at the tv, enter in the channel (she usually told her 24) and then wait for the channel to change. My grandmother would say "okay" and seconds later... you could hear the phone beeping and then my grandmother saying it hadn't worked. My mom would again explain that she was using the phone not the remote, and half the nights my mom ended up driving over there to fix the tv. We even went so far as creating labels for the phone and tv ... but it didn't seem to help. I tell this story because I was hysterically laughing remembering all this stuff the first time Micah picked up the remote and held it to his ear like a telephone. We joked that he was taking after his great-grandmother. Since then, Micah likes to treat everything as a phone...puzzle pieces, remotes, toys...it really doesn't matter. If you say to him "where is the phone" or "say hello" he grabs whatever he can and holds it to his ear. It is clearly adorable - and he obviously understands the concept of phone, he just hasn't figured out that only certain things are phones.
Micah's other favorite habit is drumming. He likes to bang/drum on EVERYTHING. My parents want to buy him a drum set...I think we are in BIG trouble!!
For his birthday, one of my friends bought him a singing donkey. He has loved this toy from the beginning, but he has recently figured out how to push the red button on the donkey's leg and make it sing. He could spend all day turning it on and off.
And some video of Micah "playing catch" and showing off a few other tricks:
Friday, January 1, 2010
New Year's 2010
We were watching Micah, watching tv, talking, and catching up, and it really was a nice evening. As we started to watch the New Year's festivities on tv, we could not believe Micah was going strong. The clock hit 11:30...11:45...11:50...at 11:53, I joked with DH that Micah would fall asleep just before the ball dropped. We took this picture of him to show our wide awake crazy baby:
Then...11:59 came. By 11:59:23...Micah passed out on the couch. Yep, that is right - he just crashed, right before the ball dropped! He was DEAD asleep. We were holding him in front of the tv, putting his jacket on, transferring him to the car - and he didn't make a sound. He was out cold the entire ride home and for the transfer to his bed, and he slept until 10:00 the next morning!
New Year's Day, we decided to take him up to visit my grandmother to celebrate her 97th birthday. We brought her a cake, and the two of them were able to spend some quality time together. She suffers from dementia, so I'm not exactly certain she knew who he was, but she seemed to think he was beautiful, and he made all of the residents smile. I just like knowing that my Grammy has had the opportunity to spend some time with him, and I'll forever be able to hold those memories.
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