Adventures in Making Baby Food

Today I found myself becoming one of those people.  I stood in the grocery store and was in one of my moods of calculating the cost of use of everything.  I’m always a careful grocery shopper, but as of late I’ve been seeking ways to cut corners even closer and inch just a little bit more out of the food budget. 

It takes money to feed kids.  We have kids, we don’t have a whole lotta money.  Since the wallet has gotten a bit thinner we have discovered there isn’t alotta difference between store brand and name brand foods.  In some ways the store brand or off brand is better than the name brand.  Believe it or not the stuff at the dollar stores is the same stuff at the grocery store. 

We have also discovered that sometimes it’s worth it to pay a few cents more to get a better quality product (especially if you have saved somewhere else on your list).  In the end the food goes into your body and you don’t need to eat junk.  For example, wheat spaghetti is more expensive but better for you than the typical “white” pasta.  It’s a few cents more but in the long run worth it.

It had been a long mental run though the grocery store.  I was longing to get home and off of my feet for a bit when I was rounding off the trip in the baby food asile.  Jars and cans of baby food stared at me from the shelves and I was so tempted to grab what I knew we needed for the next week and go.  Instead I picked up a jar and started reading the ingrediants, I repeated this a few times and found myself heading back into the frozen foods section.  A few bags of basic veggies and I was on my way home.

So I cooked the corn, green beans and carrots and struggled with my 30 year old blender.  I pureed the cooked veggies and poured them into ice cube trays, covered and stuck in the freezer.  Overall the process took about an hour.  Longer than what I would have liked but I look at it this way:

• I know exactly what is going into Michelle’s belly, and there are no addictives or perservatives.
• I have about three weeks worth of baby food made up for a fraction of the cost of buying it ready made.
• It was a fun activity to do with the help of Megan (5) who kept me company with all sorts of chatter.

We are enjoying introducing Michelle to foods.  She loves tasting different things and loves making a mess when she eats.  I am going to start doing some research into different veggies and fruits she can start eating.  We have been very lucky with Megan and she eats a wide variety of veggies and fruits, I hope Michelle is the same way.

So with pureed carrots on my shirt (I never said it was a non-messy process!) and a happy baby with green beans in her belly, I consider this adventure a success. 

Like Another Hole In My Head

We needed another cat like another hole in the head…

Allow me to introduce you to Lola.  She’s our newest baby, and the same age as Michelle.

Perfect Body

 I find myself asking “what is the perfect body for me?”  In as much as I’m tempted to get Bill to take a nude photo of me and then throw it into photoshop till I’m happy, I won’t.  For me to be happy the majority of my clothes have to fit comfortably.  I will always have a hourglass figure, that won’t ever change and I love my curves.  It’s part of my job to look good and now having to struggle more than I’m used to isn’t something I particularly care for.  It must be done and I know that when I’m happy with my body again I’ll be much happier overall.

I’m not one to ask for help often unless I absolutely need it.  I wasn’t totally convinced that I needed it, but after having some more complicated medical issues and realizing that loosing weight after Elle’s birth was going to be harder this time I reached out.  So now I have a totally awesome fitness coach and I’m working on what seems to be a program that I will see some great results with.  I will be writing more about this adventure here soon, so be on the lookout!

Setting a good example of health and wellness  for my kids is important to me, and a part of my decision to make some changes and do this program.  If our children don’t learn health habits and fitness from their parents, then who is going to teach them?  Sure our schools are doing better but that’s not enough. We live in a society that glamorizes fast food and cosmetic surgury, we are responsible to teach by example. 

I have two little girls who I love more than anything, my oldest is almost six and she’s very aware of how she looks.  She is healthy with what she eats and she is very fortunate to be very tall for her age therefore hopefully she won’t have some of the battles that a person of shorter stature would. I worry about her self image, we hug her and tell her all the time that she is pretty on both the inside and out. We stress that it’s just not your ourward appearance but what’s inside.  At the same time I know what battles she has ahead of her, I remember oh too well the tribulations of growing up female and having all sorts of images projected at you as to what you should look like. 

Meg has been going with me for awhile on photoshoots and she even does her own (side note: it’s so cute when she gets a new outfit she just loves she insists that she does a photoshoot in it almost immediately.).  She has fun being a ham and as long as she’s having fun that’s all that matters.  I hope she always has fun seeing pictures of herself and seeing herself as beautiful no matter what she looks like physically.  A perfect body for my daughter is one that is healthy, fit and that she is comfortable and happy in.  In my renewed quest to get into better shape I’m trying to make her a bit more aware about getting in enough physical activity, how important it is to eat right and that treats are fun in moderation. (yes she’s so smart she knows what that means!) 

I remember being about Meg’s age and seeing my Mom working out at home, sometimes I’d ask to join her and I remember how grown-up and cool it was to workout with Mom.  My mother has been blessed with being naturally slender (somehow I got the curves she missed out on) and has always taken pride in her looks.  Mom has never been one to eat alot of junk food, and she’s never been a health nut either.  She’s always been middle of the road but she also always impressed on me that it was important to take care of your body.  Still to this day when I do certain excersizes I will always think of my Mom.

The perfect bodies in my household are the ones we already have, but being taken care of to the best of our abilities.  Everyone is perfect just the way they are in this family, but there is no reason not to be in the best health and shape possible so that we can enjoy life to the fullest.  I’m excited to find a more perfect body underneath the perfect body that I already have.  We have been blessed with so much, it would be shame to neglect what we have been given.

 

(Image property of www.billmccord.com)

Silent Noise

Once upon a time I lived where the actual sound of total silence was possible.  You didn’t hear the neighbors, the air unit, cars, planes, trains, people, animals, nothing.  Just silence.  It would roar when I would step out on my patio and look at the night sky, if I strained my ears I could hear the tiny babbling of the nearby creek or a twitter of a night-dwelling insect.

In surbia there is no such thing as silence.  In our household right now the air unit is blowing,  no noisey appliances are running, the kids are not awake, tv’s and steros are turned off, and occassionally I hear a sigh/snore from the nearby sleeping cat.  Birds are squaking outside, cars are rumbling in the distance and occassionally a loud neighbor wizzes down the quiet street.  Dogs are barking in the distance and some idiot cannot control the bass in their sound system.  Even though it’s “quiet” in the sense that there is no blaring obvivious noise taking center ring, it’s extremely loud.

We get so tied up into the fast pace of our lives, we forget to slow down and listen to the sounds of silence.  It seems like no matter where you go the achievement of total silence is hard to come by, as even air makes a noise.    My ears have gotten so used to noise that I cannot sleep at night if there is not a “white noise” on. 

If you do any research on noise and the various colors and physics behind “noise” it gives your head a whole different type of noise, commonly known as a headache.

Republican Boobs

Hi.  I’m a Republican, and I have boobs.

In defense of Meghan McCain, a fellow Republican with boobs.  Who found herself chastized by many over posting a picture of herself with cleavage.  Stop.The.Press.  Republican women have boobs.  Yes under those pantsuits and turtlenecks they have boobs. 

Meghan McCain – I’m No Slut

Wait… so if they have boobs then *gasp* could it be that they have the capacity to have sex?

Have we really lost such a grasp on reality that it’s socially accecptable for insurance companies to cover the costs of Cialis for senior citizens, and then we slap the knuckles of a 20somthing girl for showing some cleavage in a fun photo on her Twitter account? 

Every party has it’s issues, but damn.  At least she has a brain behind her boobs, something that many of the “boobs” in Washington cannot say they possess.

I’m a Republican and I have Boobs.