Delicious Food

Sage looooves to eat. Which is obvious if you've counted the number of rolls on her arms lately...
And she eats everything-Vegetables, Fruits, Yogurt, Etc. Hopefully, she continues to be so open-minded about food.
Her favorites are still squash, sweet potatoes, apples and bananas. Recently I've been getting more "exciting" fruits for her to eat such as raspberries, blackberries, mango, etc. She seems to love those too!

"Paddy Pans"

Everyone's family has different traditions during the holidays. My mom and I go on chocolate binges (literally. no joke. you would be impressed shocked to know how much we ate this year. i had fudge for breakfast for about a week. not WITH breakfast; i had it FOR breakfast.)
Apparently, Dana's family made something he calls "Paddy Pans." Dana talked about it CONSTANTLY through the month of December so his mom emailed me the recipe.
Side Note: His mother labeled it "Petite Pans" which makes me wonder if Dana calls them "Paddy Pans" referring the the fact that there is bread dough involved that needs kneading and rolling or if he just didn't understand the word when it was said. I should ask him if he realizes that the actual name is not "Paddy Pans"
Dana was top chef. Sage and I got to be his assistants.
Long story short: we made a type of yeast bread, created little biscuit shapes with them and stuffed them with chocolate.
I kick myself that I did not take a picture of the finished project.
I did get a couple of shots during the bread making process.
Here is Sage punching down the dough.

I confess that I negatively judged the "Paddy Pans" but the end result was quite tasty.

I'd still rather have fudge for breakfast though.

Makes me feel far more rebelious.

6 Month Stats

Sage is 6 months old already! I've been looking back on all of the videos that I've taken of her and it's hard to believe she was ever so small as 7lbs.
I knew I never should have fed her....she's getting too big!
Height: 25.5inches (about the 50th percentile)
Weight: 17lbs (about the 70th percentile)
Food: She's eating solid food regularly now. Daily, she gets around 36 ounces of formula and I feed her solids three times a day when I'm home with her and twice a day if she goes to daycare. She only eats about 3-4 tablespoons of solids at a time typically. She can hold her bottle pretty well if she's reclined back and we've tried introducing a sippy cup. She likes to hold it and gnaw on the spout but I don't think she quite gets that liquid comes out. I'm still making the majority of her food (remember the terrible post on the carrot fiasco?). She's eaten squash, sweet potatoes, sweet peas, green beans, bananas, avocado, pears, apples, apricots, and pumpkin. So far she's eating it all pretty well but there are definitely ones she prefers over others. She tends to favor the squash and bananas the most with pumpkin and sweet peas being the least favorite.
Movement: This kid will not be still. I have to force her to cuddle or else wait until she's VERY sleepy. She's rolling all over the place and if you don't watch her she will plumb roll off into another room-or over to the cat-whichever she gets to first. She's got the rolling from back to tummy as well as tummy to back down pat and it's her primary mode of transportation. Every day I lay out a nice fluffy blanket for her to play on and everyday she stays on it only about 25% of the time. She loves toys-preferably ones that she can bang into something to make a loud noise. She's doing great as far as picking things up and she only bangs herself in the head with her toys every now and then :) She's SO CLOSE to being able to sit up on her own without any support. Right now she can sit up as long as she uses her hands to brace herself but she can sit without using her arms for a couple seconds at a time before she loses balance and topples over. I think she would pick up on it faster but she realizes that she can do more things, and it's easier, if she's laying on her tummy.
Temperment: Drama. She is full of drama. She's typically a very happy baby and full of smiles but she's very sensitive and can throw a full on tantrum at the drop of the hat if something doesn't go just right. I try very hard not to let her see her bottles as I make them because if she gets one look she will scream like she's not eaten in days till she gets it. She does pretty well with strangers as long as I'm in her direct site. I took her to a baby shower today and she was cheesing it up for everyone there for the whole 2 hours we stayed. She let whoever wanted to hold her as long as I stood nearby but if I walked away she started crying. She's also laughing. It's GREAT :)

Baby food fiasco

I think most everyone knows that I'm making all of Sage's baby food.

*well that's not 100% accurate. i usually buy one jar of a new type of food and feed it to her just to ensure that she doesn't have a bad reaction. afterwards i start making it myself. i figured it best not to make a million ounces of something she turns out to be allergic to...*

For some odd reason I CANNOT steam a stupid carrot. I've successfully made squash multiple times, sweet potatoes, sweet peas, etc...but for some reason a simple carrot is beyond my capabilities.
The first time I burned the pot. I use one of those steamer baskets and I put in the same amount of water that I had done for the squash-apparently, carrots take far longer to steam than squash and the water all evaporated the the pan burned.
Dana said: "Uh...Beth, something is smoking. And what is that smell??"
The bottom of the pot was literally bubbling...bad news.
So I dumped the pot, dumped the carrots and put the steamer basket in the wash.
The next time I tried to steam carrots, I got that same gross burnt teflon smell as before so Dana and I deduced that the steamer basket may have also been affected. So I tossed it.
Then I went to Walmart and bought a brand new steamer basket and all new carrots.
I tried again.
This time I swear I watched the pot.
I even added water again sometime in the middle.

Fail.

Somehows I burnt it all up again.
Bottom of the pot was bubbling yet again.

I tossed the pot, steamer basket and the carrots again.

So far Sage is still without carrots-and we are down two pots, two steamer baskets and two bags of organic carrots.

Will someone please volunteer to come to my house and steam some stupid carrots?
Pretty please??

Carrots = Success

Oh yes, Sage thinks carrots are YUMMY! There was only minimal spitting at me this time. I definitely consider that to be a success.
So far she's eaten acorn squash, sweet potatoes and carrots.
I think next we'll go for some sweet peas!

Sweet Potatoes

Hmm..she's eaten them a couple times before and didn't have this reaction. She has been spitting a lot lately and thinks that it's super funny when she does it. I'm almost thinking that I was making too big of an excited deal about eating and got her wound up. Either way, it proved to be quite hilarious :)

Food pictures as promised

I love this kid. She's so cute :) Even covered in squash!

First *real* food

We hit that 4 month mark a few weeks back and Sage's doctor said we could start trying to give her real food. I am very excited about this although I understand it's going to create far more work for me. Still excited though :)
We gave her some standard rice cereal a few times and she seemed uninterested at best. It's hard to tell if she really gets any of it down...the cereal goes in her mouth somewhat but I swear the vast majority ultimately goes on her clothes, chair, face, etc.
I decided to give her something with a bit of flavor-just to see if it made a difference. I wouldn't want to eat that gross rice cereal either...Dana and I went to the grocery store and picked out a lovely acorn squash (which I have never eaten by the way...I figure Sage is a good guinea pig for this sort of thing). I chopped it up, steamed it, food processed it into mush and then thinned it down a tad for her.
She LOVED it! She was doing great at openning her mouth and letting me put the spoon in there. Again, hard to tell how much she actually ingested because the vast majority seemed to be on her bib, face, chair, hands, etc. But she kept openning up her mouth to get more and didn't spit any at me. I take that as a victory. She even started to fuss at me when I wasn't fast enough. Miss Piggy :)
The truly sad part of the whole ordeal is that Dana did grab the camera for pictures but I had forgotten to put the memory card in it so it didn't save a single photo! UGH! I think we might have captured some of it on video.
I did get some photos of the second time I gave her the squash so those will have to do. I'll post them as soon as I download them onto the computer.