Question on Child Social Behavioral Development

Is it wrong to have inanimate objects telling babies that they love them?
Does this confusion, in fact, cause excessive drool?
Please discuss.

Freezer Cube Food

I have been making baby food by steaming the food: broccoli, green beans; baking plain chicken breasts in a little water; peeling carrots. Then I use the blender or food processor and grate the food, pulsing a few times, letting it go on high for about 60 seconds, then scraping it into an ice cube tray (raw carrots are above).
Next, I freeze it overnight and then put the food cubes into a freezer Ziploc. I was using regular ziplocks but I think they're more susceptible to freezer burn since the plastic is thinner. If you want to be more environmentally friendly, you could re-use the bags. Labeling is important because you might forget which vegetable that blob of green represents.
When it's time to eat, I stick a cube or two of food into a small ceramic dish in a pot of water and add a little water, then bring it to a simmer. I need to mash it up with a fork or spoon to get it to melt faster. I don't add too much water because it gets so hot that I usually need to add some cold water to get it back down to edible temperature.
Pictured above is a cube of green beans with a cube of pears.
Important lesson learned: do not use a half pint canning jar. The bottom will break because of the heat. Glass jars have flat bottoms. Ceramic bowls do not. Usually.
When the food is heated up, add some powdered oatmeal or rice cereal and water to the right consistency, test the temperature, and serve!
I like to have a variety of cubes in the freezer so that my little boy gets a rotating selection of meat, veggies and fruit.

Breastfeeding: How Often and for How Long?

How often should you breastfeed? The best answer I found came from Better Baby Food which said "on demand". Feeding my 8 month old six times a day, I agree with this the most. But I thought I would share what other books were suggesting after starting the baby on solid foods:

Super Baby Food:

6 month olds should be breastfed 5-6 times a day

7 month olds should be breastfed 5 times a day

8 month olds should be breastfed 4-5 times a day

9 month olds should be breastfed 3-5 times a day

10 month olds should be breastfed 2-5 times a day

Well-Fed Baby:

6 month olds should be breastfed 5 times a day

7 month olds should be breastfed 5 times a day

8 month olds should be breastfed 4-5 times a day

9 month olds should be breastfed 3-5 times a day

10 month olds should be breastfed 3-4 times a day

12 month olds should be breastfed 3+ times a day

Blender Baby Foods:

6 month olds should be breastfed 3 times a day

7 month olds should be breastfed 3 times a day

8 month olds should be breastfed 1 time a day!

9 month olds should be breastfed 4 times a day

12 month olds should be breastfed 0 times a day/ they recommend cow's milk. I don't know if they messed up in the charts or what, but it would be pretty difficult for the body to go from feeding once a day to 4 times a day!

When to start citrus?

I remembered reading that you shouldn't give any citrus foods to infants until they are 12 months old, but I wasn't sure why, so I looked it up. One source Super Baby Foods said to wait until 12 months because oranges are a common allergen (437). The Well-Fed Baby said to give citrus foods to infants over 10 months old. The Blender Baby Food book has recipes that call for 1/2 cup of orange juice in them: one recipe (58) meant for six month olds has a note that says to substitute water for stomachs irritated by citrus, but recipes on page 72 (for 6 months) and page 118 (for 8 months) do not say anything about the orange juice ingredient. The Homemade Baby Food book says you should wait until the baby is over 12 months old for tomatoes and orange juice because of digestion. I have heard that it is harder for kidneys to digest oranges, but that didn't come from a book or a doctor.

In conclusion, whether it's for allergies or digestion, I would wait 12 months. I do wonder about foods (including processed infant foods) that include citric acid as an ingredient. My guess is that it's such a small amount that it won't matter too much.

Bumbo

When our friend (a professional photographer) took pictures of our baby at 4 months, she introduced us to the Bumbo, a baby seat made out of a plastic yet sort of squishy type of styrofoam. It's shaped in such a way that holds the baby up in a seated position. We got away with "the green chair" for as long as we could, which served a similar purpose, except in more of a lying down position. The green chair worked great on hard floors because he could kick his legs and rock himself. The Bumbo, or "the blue chair" as we now call it, is a great thing to have to sit him somewhere safe while we do something quick, like take off a coat or shoes. But we didn't buy one because we didn't feel like spending $40 on something that we would only use for a few months. Quite literally, the very day that we had our baby sitting up on his own for about2-3 minutes at a time (before flopping backward or sideways), our friends with a newborn loaned us their Bumbo. It has been great, but we are estimating a solid 2-3 weeks of use before he has outgrown it. At 7 1/2 months, he thrusts his butt up to the point that he is very close to getting himself out of the chair, and I definitely don't feel safe leaving him unattended in it!
You might see in the photo that it comes with a tray, but we never had the chance to use it since he was already pretty big for it.
In conclusion, definitely get one if it is free from a friend.

Diaper inserts

At around 5-6 months we began using the term "overnighters" referring to diapers to wear while sleeping overnight, around 9-10 hours (if we are lucky). We always use the Bum Genius brand diaper (see blog) and it began with one large and one small (or newborn sized) insert. After a very short time, it became two large inserts, both of which are folded over at the end: they come with snaps to adjust to the size of the diaper, and since our baby is wearing the diapers on the middle-sized adjustment, the inserts are set to the first snap, which makes them the proper length. If you use Bum Genius diapers, you totally know what I'm talking about. If you don't use them, you are probably completely lost right now. So I'll include photos to help.

You have to offset the two large inserts so that the fold-over is on opposite ends, otherwise it would be way too bulky in one spot. Even on opposite ends, the bulk at the top end creates an awkward lump for the baby to sleep on. Still, in the morning, both inserts are soaked through and they work pretty well. For a short while. Then you'll get the occasional leak, which requires a change of clothes, a change of blanket, a change of sheets. This means more laundry to do, more time wasted. I thought, my baby is only seven months old and I have friends with two year olds wearing cloth diapers overnight, so I asked one of them. (If you don't already have friends with two-year-olds in cloth diapers, go out and find some NOW! Or talk to me in a year and a half.) My friend suggested Hemp Babies Doublers. I was not familiar with the term "doublers" but as far as I can tell, it means "inserts". Maybe it refers to "extra inserts" as in, double up the inserts. You seriously have to learn a whole new vocabulary when you have an infant!

I searched Amazon.com, which is such an amazing website. Remember when they first invented Amazon.com? It was all about buying books, and I wasn't a fan because I liked to shop at the local bookstore. I still do, and I highly recommend Prairie Lights for new books and The Haunted Bookshop for used books. Anyway, I'm a fan of Amazon.com because it seems like whenever I can't find something at a local store, or even online, Amazon has it. For example, I set my co-workers to the task of looking at the grocery stores and convenience stores for grape bubble gum. I used to always chew grape gum but I hadn't seen it in years. Where did it go? No one could find any. Then, one day my co-worker surprised me, she had searched it on Amazon and sure enough, you can buy grape gum on the website! The downside is that you have to buy a LOT of it. Another example, when my favorite food coop had every brand of Tom's of Maine toothpaste on sale except the kind I get ($8 per tube), I searched Amazon and found it for $5 per tube. Side note- I complained and since then, the coop has included it in their sales and I have not had to buy it online. But I know it's there for the future. Another tip- flea medications which tend to be overpriced at the vet are available on Amazon. To summarize this extremely long-winded review of one of the world's most popular websites, Amazon did NOT have any Hemp Babies Doublers! I know! I was stunned. Then I remembered the website Nell's Natural Babies.

Nell's website is similar to Cottonbabies.com, but I like it better. We actually registered at Cottonbabies but we didn't have much luck with the registration. I mean, the people trying to buy us things on that site didn't have much luck with the registration, which is why we hardly got anything from there, even though we really wanted some of that stuff. We did get our diaper pail from Cottonbabies, which I highly recommend if you are using cloth diapers. The diaper liner, however is not entirely leak proof.

Nell's is the website that we rented newborn diapers from, and they have a great selection of cloth diaper-related items, including Hemp Babies doublers! Take that, Amazon! Apparently, if you wash the hemp doublers several times they become even more absorbent, but we only washed them once, and to sum up a short story that has become quite long, one Bum Genius large insert + one Hemp Babies doubler worked AWESOME after my baby slept for about 10 hours. Both were very soaked but no leaks! And look at me, with time to write this super long story instead of doing another load of piss-soaked baby laundry!

Update: I bought 4 hemp doublers from Nell's ($3 each) and I plan on buying 4 more in the near future. I can tell that soon we will be using 2 hemp doublers with one microfiber insert. And sometimes little boy likes to poop in his fresh new clean overnighter before bed, which means we go through those inserts rather quickly!

When Can My Baby Start Eating That?

I have been doing some research on baby food recently, which is why there will be several food-related blogs coming up. I got a little frustrated that different books I looked at had different suggestions of when babies can start eating certain foods, so I decided to make a chart. On the left is a list of about 75 foods, in alphabetical order. On the top are sources 1-5 of different books. The numbers for each source are the age, in months, that they suggest for babies to begin eating that food.
The chart gives you a good idea of what foods are agreed upon across the board (honey, cow's milk) and what foods have differing opinions of when to start (apples, apricots). To be safe, you can start your baby on the food when he or she is the oldest age for it (for example, 8 months old for apricots). If it says "or", it means that the book suggested one age in one place, and another age in a different place!

Food	1	2	3	4	5
apples	8	7	6		4-6
apricots	8	7	6
asparagus	7
avocado			6		4-6
bananas			6
beans	9
beef			8
beets	9	9	6		8
berries	12				12
blueberries			6
brewer's yeast	8
broccoli	8		6		7
brussels sprouts	9
cantaloupes	8		6
carrots	7	6 or 9	6		7
cauliflower	9		6
cheeses	8		9	6-9
cherries			6
chicken			8		8
citrus	12				12
cottage cheese	7	7 or 8
crackers, soda/graham		8		6-9
egg, white HB	12		12		12
egg, yolk HB	7	8	8	6-9	8
eggplant	9
figs			6
fish			8		10
fruit, cooked		6 or 7		6-9
fruit, raw		6 or 8			4-6
grapes	8
green beans	7	6	6		8
greens	9		6
ham			9
honey	12	12	12		12
juice, fruit, mild, diluted	7
kale	9
kiwi	8		6
lentils	9		7	6-9
meat		8	8	6-9
melons	8		6
milk, cows	12		12		12
nuts/seeds	8		12		12
okra	8
onion	9		7
pasta	10		9	9-12
peaches	7	7	6		4-6
peanut butter/smooth	10		12		8
pears, raw	6		6		4-6
peas	7		6		4-6
peppers, sweet	10		7
pineapple	9
potatoes, sweet			6		4-6
potatoes, white	7				4-6
powderred kelp	8
quinoa			7
rhubarb	9
rice, brown	6				8
rice, white					7
rutabaga	9
shellfish					12
spinach	9	9	6		8
split peas	9		8 or 9
sprouts	10
squash, summer	7		6		7
squash, winter	6	6	6
tahini	8
toast/bagels	6			6-9
tofu	7	7		6-9	8-12
tomatoes	12		8		12
turkey			8
turnips	9	7 or 9	6
veggies, cooked		6		6-9
yogurt		8	9	6-9	7
zucchini					7

Sources:
1 Super Baby Food
2 Well-fed Baby
3 Blender Baby Foods
4 Better Baby Foods
5 Homemade Baby Foods