The Growing Caldwell Family

Charlie has been so interested in food that we decided to start him on some solids.  I wanted to go about it in a different way than we did with Sarah Graves.  This time we are using a baby led weaning approach that I have read about several places, but found the information on Wholesome Baby Food helpful.   For starters, the title is misleading in that we are not actively beginning to wean him from milk.  However, the start of solids is in a way the start of the weaning process.  This approach lets the baby lead the way in terms of how interested and how much they desire to eat solid foods.  The focus is more on feeding them actual solids from the start rather than feeding them runny cereal or purees.   We started with some cut up banana for him to mostly grab in his fist and suck on a little.   We also put some banana in his mushy for him to suck and chew on.  The mushy is a net that holds the food and lets him suck, but not get any big c...

One of Sarah Graves' favorite foods is "cold fish stick".  When I say cold, I don't mean refrigerated, I mean still frozen!  We question how safe it could be to eat uncooked fish sticks, but when you're desperate to appease her food requests... Some of her other favorite foods are definitely safe to eat and include yogurt and almonds.  She will eat multiple yogurts in one sitting and has recently gotten into some yogurt smoothies.  She will eat other things like apple sauce, mashed sweet potatoes, and grits, but they are not the current favorite.  We keep hoping that her food choices will expand, but it seems to just go from one favorite food to the next.  I've read that this is typical of toddlers, so maybe she will begin to change her tastes as she grows.

For quite a while Sarah Graves has been talking about Kate's birthday being "tomato".  Well, we celebrated her birthday on Saturday!  Lovie brought a cake, we added a candle, we sang to Kate, and then Sarah Graves helped Kate out by blowing out the candle and eating the cake!  According to Sarah Graves, Kate turned two.   As you can see, SG loved the cake and was very happy to enjoy it for Kate!  Kate, you bring a lot of joy and humor to our family and we are glad to celebrate you! My cutie loves to help out in the kitchen and I love the idea of teaching her early how fun it is to cook and share yummy food with people that we love.  So, we made a blueberry pie on Saturday evening.  She was quite proud as she carried the flour into the kitchen for me.   She helped to measure out the flour and sugar and helped me count the number of teaspoons of cinnamon going in the bowl.   She most enjoyed stirring it all together ...

Here are a few more fun pictures from our laid back Memorial Day weekend. I asked her what she wanted to do and in her usual way she cocked her head to the side, said ooommm for a moment, and announced she wanted to paint with a paintbrush. I like a girl who knows what she wants! She enjoyed mixing all the paints together, so her art came out a bit brown. She had a great time doing it and freezer paper and tempera paints were certainly easy. I also let her help me make some homemade granola bars. Aaron thinks we are really getting crunchy if we make our own at home! We had fun doing it and they taste good, but they don't cut into bars, more like you need a spoon and I think some ice cream would be quite yummy with it!

We go to a local Greek restaurant and they simply adore Sarah Graves there.  She is treated like royalty and the entire staff dotes on her.  They love to give her special treats and I had been successful at intercepting the candy, but she knew what the lollipop was before I could grab it!  She loved it!  She was the happiest thing with it!

What to pack in a picky two-year-old's lunch has been a major debate for me.  She has to bring something that she can feed herself and it has to be something that doesn't make a huge mess.  I tried things like almond butter sandwiches, but they were returned mostly uneaten.  So this is what she usually has - a selection of snacks.  She brings almonds, craisins, goldfish crackers, another cracker made with flax seeds and craisins, and some dried apple slices.  I would love to know what other moms are putting in their kids' lunchboxes. 

Our Halloween party was inspired by all things found on Pinterest!   If you aren't on Pinterest, you should definitely check it out.  I am very addicted to it.  Here are some of the cute things that we did for the party and by we I mean Jeanne', Aaron, Mom, and me.  Jeanne' did some baking, Aaron was a huge help with cooking and party preparations, and Mom came Saturday to help me do all the last minute details and loaned us some party items.  I seem to be good at coming up with these ideas and organizing, but I couldn't pull it off without a lot of help.  I found these printables for a Halloween banner and matching bottle labels.  They were so easy for Aaron and me to put together and I thought they turned out cute.  I did these ghost cookies using Nutter Butters.  The candy coating made them taste quite yummy! These are my iced sugar cookies.  I spend forever icing them, but I was pleased with how they turned out.  Jeanne' ma...

One of my favorite meals growing up was stewed chicken.  My great grandmother and my grandmother made it frequently and I loved it.  I decided it might be a meal that appealed to Sarah Graves, too!  It took me a while to make it, but it turned out so tasty. My grandmother would serve this with potato salad, but I don't like potato salad and neither does Aaron, so we skipped that part.  Instead, I made fried eggplant!  I love fried eggplant and could eat it like candy.  Such a treat! I had a happy customer!  She liked the eggplant, too. In case you're curious how to make stewed chicken, here's the recipe that I use from Talk About Good cookbook. 12 chicken thighs (with bone and skin) 2 onions chopped 1/2 c. chopped celery 1/2 c. chopped bell pepper 1 c. oil 1 1/2 c. flour salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper to taste green oinion tops Use a large, heavy pan and heat the oil.  Heavily salt and pepper the flour, dredge the chicken in the ...

As I mentioned in her monthly letter, Sarah Graves is becoming more and more picky.  I think some of it is that she gets bored with eating.  I also think that we have been feeding her the same healthy foods for a while and she got burnt out on them.  I have been trying more one dish recipes as a way to feed her things that might appeal more to her and allow me to sneak a few good things in, too.  I thought I would post a few of the things that seem to be hits with her. Cheesy Chicken Pasta from Once a Month Mom 1/2 cup onions, chopped  · 4 Tablespoons butter or margarine 1/2 cup milk 2 - 10.5oz. cans cream of chicken soup (you can buy cream of chicken soup in the organic section in cartons to avoid the BPAs from soup in the can, the cost goes up significantly) 2 cups chicken (or turkey), cooked & cubed (I cooked the chicken in a skillet with some olive oil, coating both sides of the breast heavily with Emeril's Essence before cooking) 8 oz. ched...

We had a jam packed weekend!  Thursday night, SG and I started preparing for our weekend by making sugar cookies cut out in the shape of dog bones.  These cookies were requested for a co-worker's son's 3rd birthday party and I think they came out so cute!  SG was with me the whole time we mixed up the cookies because she wanted to be right on my hip.  Now she knows how to measure flour, crack an egg, and the joy that is all things containing sugar.  In case you haven't made them before, cut out sugar cookies take some time.  So, I did the icing on Friday night.  The party was Saturday and the icing needed time to dry.  I got the idea for these designs after looking at The Pioneer Woman's site .  I was pretty excited with how they turned out and it was surprisingly easy and fun. Just after I finished the cookies, Aaron's good friend, Dustin, and his wife, Lorna arrived.  They stayed with us while they attended her cousin's wedding...

Sarah Graves is very interested in feeding herself.  I let her do it some.  I don't like a lot of mess and I definitely don't like food going everywhere, so I limit what she feeds herself and I "help" her with a lot of it.  Aunt Nay on the other hand is much more willing to let her "experience" things.  This has good points, so I'm glad that someone doesn't mind all the mess that it can make!  She was certainly having a good time.  Sorry that the picture insists on being in landscape, I have rotated it and it is saved that way, but blogger insists that landscape is the way to show it.

Aaron picked these from our little backyard garden!  We had one a week ago and then we had two more!  I wasn't sure if we would get anything out of the plants we planted, but this is exciting!

For the last few weeks Sarah Graves has become particular about what she will eat.  I have heard that this happens as their growth slows and their caloric intake flattens out.  I was prepared for a decrease in quantity, but not for an all out refusal of vegetables.  So, I have been doing some looking trying to get ideas on what we can do differently.  I had the idea that she was frustrated that she couldn't feed herself, so finger foods might be more gratifying for her.  I went to Wholesome Baby Food  and got some ideas for finger foods as well as some spices to try on her food to give them a bit more flavor.  I tried making little sticks of turkey meatloaf that contained pureed carrots and apples as well as making roasted carrots with a little sage and baked sweet potato fries dusted with cinnamon.  She was slightly intrigued by the carrots, but Lucy ended up eating the rest of these foods.  Aaron and I thought they tasted pretty good, so I ...

I recently saw a piece that the American Academy of Pediatrics put out regarding toxins in our environment and their effects on babies.  The believed effects are increases in diseases such as childhood cancers, asthma, ADHD, and autism spectrum disorders.  It is believed that when a fetus or baby is exposed to chemicals it can impair their development and dramatically increase the likelihood of them developing one of these diseases.  It is also believed that chemical exposure in our daily lives is the likely cause of so many young women having difficulty conceiving and maintaining pregnancies as well as a significant increase in testicular cancer in men.    Here is what was posted on AAP's site: The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is calling for an overhaul of the nation’s chemical management policy because the current system fails to protect children and pregnant women, who are most vulnerable to hazardous chemical exposures. Over th...

Saturday morning I started cooking lunch to take to one of our midwives, Margaret, who has had some really awful things happen to her lately; one of them being that she fell and broke her ankle leaving her unable to move around for the past month.  A care calendar was organized and I signed up to bring her lunch.  Part of her meal included some cinnamon muffins.  They were on the counter cooling and I guess SG helped herself to one (who knew she would reach up there and knock one off) because the next thing I saw was SG holding parts of a muffin and shoving it in her mouth as hard as she could go.  I couldn't scold her, so I put her in her high chair to enjoy the rest of it.  She was such a sweet girl while we visited with Margaret and Aaron cut her grass.  She showed her all her toys and most of her party tricks!  After we left Margaret's we made a trip to IKEA.  I had hoped that SG would fall asleep at the start of the journey, but instead she ...

We have tried multiple types of sippy cups before we found one that she likes.  It's a little like Goldilocks, I guess.  I didn't include the varieties with the straws that we tried in an effort to get her to drink from a cup.  Finally, we found this one by Nuby and she seems to like it.  She will pick it up and drink from it herself.  She will only take water out of it, but at least she's drinking! 

I heard this story on the news this morning about a girl with peanut allergies that are so severe, they are considered a disability.  The Americans with Disabilities Act requires that her school make accommodations for her.  The accommodations are in the form of requiring the kids in her first grade class to wash their hands and rinse their mouths out before entering the classroom.  Her allergy is so severe that breathing peanuts can harm her.  Parents are protesting that this is unreasonable because the accommodation is impacting their children.  I personally thought that banning peanut products in most schools was a bit much, but this seems extreme.  As a parent, I think I would feel this was unreasonable to ask my child to do multiple times a day, every day.  I can also understand the girl's parents wanting her to be safe.  I wonder how she goes anywhere in public?  Eating peanut butter sandwiches seems like such a normal kid thing, but ...

Leading up to the beginning of Lent Aaron and I decided that we would start the 17 Day Diet.  I had a few reasons, the two biggest were probably my dreadful addiction to sugar and my desire to model good eating habits for SG.  We gave it a lot of thought, talked about the foods we would be eating, and some of the foods that we would not be eating.  In case you haven't heard about it, the 17 Day Diet  has been quite popular with TV shows like The Doctors  and the Dr. Oz show.  The program goes through 4 phases and each one lasts for 17 days.  During phase 1 you can eat as much lean chicken, turkey, and fish, non-starchy vegetables, and egg whites as you like.  You eat 2 servings a day of fat free, no sugar added yogurt (greek yogurt is recommended) and fruit.  You are encouraged to drink green tea several times a day, warm lemon water in the morning, and at least 7 glasses of water a day.  You can have up to 2 T. of olive oil o...

On the weekends, I like to have what I think of as fun breakfast.  Fun breakfast to me is the kind of breakfast I don't have time for on a weekday.  French toast is one of my favorites.  When I was a kid, my Dad would get up on Saturday mornings and often he would make french toast.  He called it Daddio's Famous French Toast.  I have a lot of fond memories of those Saturday mornings.  Yes, I like a lot of powdered sugar on mine. Sarah Graves had french toast, too.  Minus the powdered sugar.  She at a whole slice of her own!  She had a hard, round tummy when she was finished.  I handed her pieces that she fed herself.  Self-feeding is something that we don't do a lot of, but this was something she could have on her own.