I truly think that Cecelia looks so much like Truman that it's rather eerie. Sometimes she will make an expression and it will take my breath away, transporting me back in time about 2 years ago to when Truman was her age. But then other times, I really see that she is her own little person and like nobody else in the world. Even those times when they seem like clones to me, Cecelia is definitely a more feminine version of baby Truman---with a lot more hair, blue eyes, and a face that is not a perfect circle. :) Also, Truman was a HUGE baby and Cecelia is pretty average for her weight (but super tall). So there's that.
Anyway, I've been wanting to compare baby photos for my two little munchkins for awhile now. Looking at pictures side by side makes me think they are NOT as similar as I imagine them to be in my head. I dunno. I feel like I'm not capturing their similar expressions on camera very well. What do you think?
Cecelia at 8 months, all pictures of Truman are 6-9 months.
Oh. And I did a 'naked baby' photoshoot with Cecelia yesterday. I plan to do an entire post dedicated to her adorable cheeks but for now---had to do more comparisons between her and Truman's naked shoot. He was only 6 months old here and already 19 lbs (!!)---so similar sizes but he was extra smooshy and younger. Seriously, sweet baby skin is just about the most intoxicating thing ever, right? Obsessed. Don't care if my children will be embarrassed of these pictures someday. Worth it to capture the lovely baby lumps!
Our children both have big cracks. And awesome thigh rolls. And waist line from cloth diapers;)
Excited!
One of my fave photos of Truman as a baby, and Cecelia's eyes are so freaking blue here (and her hair so RED!)
Double chins! No necks! Eyebrows!
I mean...
This kind of shot makes my ovaries hurt. AND I STILL HAVE A BABY to love right now. Stop it, ovaries.
So fun to compare my babes. I will probably do this again many times over because I can't help myself.
Let's discuss the progression of moving from all milk to some 'real' food, shall we? I've literally had this post drafted for over two months which is a new record for me. Not really sure why it's taken me this long to discuss Cecelia eating real food, but I guess I just figured it may be a boring post to many. I really liked reading back over Truman's baby food post, though, so what the heck. Here we go again.
This time around, I put off feeding Cecelia any sort of solids until she turned six months old. And then I was like, 'Um, how do I feed a baby food again?' I thought about going right to finger foods a la Baby Led Weaning but then I figured I should do purees for just a little while. Mostly because that is what I know from my first time around as a mom. ;) And I totally forgot about this website that is really fun and helpful when making combinations and little 'meals' for baby. It's where I go when I need to know how to prepare a food that I want to make into a puree and it also has great ideas for food choices I'd never think about on my own.
Making your own baby food is incredibly easy. And it saves a lot of money (though you can find store-bought purees for pretty inexpensive, too.). The first things I decided to make were squash and sweet potato. And this time around I actually had a real food processor to help with the chopping instead of trying to use a little Magic Bullet.
Basically, for a lot of the foods you puree it means: baking in some water, scooping out, adding to a food processor of sorts with extra water, and then storing/freezing it somehow. Not bad, a little messy, but kind of fun.
(forgot about the food processor with this first batch--still using the Magic Bullet here. Whoops!)
Oh, his black eye;(
I just add the purees to ice cube trays, but I know they have some really cute 'baby food' storage trays out there, too. I like having a cube to pull out of the freezer though---pretty sure that it's 1 oz per cube and pretty easy to microwave/thaw out.
I also kept some of the sweet potatoes back after baking, to use as 'chunky' foods instead of puree. She started loving chunky/finger foods around the 7 month mark and I'm pleasantly surprised at how well she handles bites of real food.
Also kept back some of the baked squash without pureeing.
And, well, the bib was the biggest hit of all.
Oh, these pictures of my little doll just kill me. This is the first 'real' time I gave her purees and also chunks of sweet potatoes and squash--right at 6 months old.
Then came some pears. Despite the facial expression, she really did like them! Keeping the peel on part of the slice helps her grab them easier.
But girlfriend has always loved a spoon something fierce.
And bananas (partially peeled)--she loves those, too.
Spoon again!
Why isn't this working?
Close!
I forgot how messy it is to feed a baby real food.
Oh, hi! 7.5 months old here and enjoying some yogurt!
MY SPOON IS A SEPTOR!
I can't.
So anyway, that's my child eating. And now that she is loving the finger foods a lot more than spoon-fed stuff, I have no problem moving away from the homemade purees and trying out some more chunky stuff. I also have no problem buying the store-bought containers because she really DOES love their smoothness a lot more than my homemade attempts. Both of my kids have preferred their purees to be silky smooth and I feel like no matter what I do, I can't get mine to be THAT perfect. So Gerber is consumed just as much if not more than mommy's version over here at 8 months. But I also feel like we won't be doing purees that much longer anyway. Her pincer grasp is insane and her sense of independence even more so. Which is why she is holding her own spoon in many of those pictures.
Kind of like how I cloth diaper and love it....during the day, and on my days at home. But nighttime and daycare? No problem using disposables. Same with homemade baby food---I dig it, but I also like to go the more 'traditional' route and mix in the store-boughts. I suppose I'm kind of a hybrid-crunchy mommy, huh?
I wanted to make a list of things we've tried so far in the 2 months we've done food. More for my own record-keeping than anything, since it's not like I've gotten all that creative with food choices just yet.
Homemade food by 8 months: (separately and mixed together)
baked squash, pureed and pieces
baked sweet potato, pureed and pieces
baked pears with cinnamon and sugar, pureed
pumpkin puree (from a can--why am I including it in the homemade list?!)
Store bought foods we've tried by 8 months:
puffs
yogurt melts (hates the orange, gag-city. Loves the strawberry with a passion.)
Yo Baby yogurts (a fave!)
green beans pureed (surprisingly loved them. At least one child will eat greens)
mixed garden vegetables puree (peas, carrots, spinach)
mixed fruit with oatmeal puree (apples and banana)-not a fave for some reason
banana mixed berry puree (the bomb-bananas with blackberry and blueberry)
apples and cherry puree
peach pureed in a pouch
carrots puree
banana puree
applesauce
Whole foods we've tried by 8 months:
bananas
pears
shredded cheese
sliced block cheese (loves. A Wisconsin girl already)
deli turkey breast
black beans (a fave. Hate the resulting diapers, though).
watermelon
cantaloupe
avocado (another fave)
How about a few videos? Because what mother doesn't love to take an absurd amount of video documentation of her children slopping food into their mouths?
First solids (proud mommy)
Green beans----anti-climatic, for sure
Puffs!
Slamming her sippy cup with authority
Oh yeah, we are doing pretty good with a sippy cup over here. I'm only putting water in it so far but I love watching her face when she actually gets to drink a few sips instead of just chewing on the spout. I have about 10 billion different kinds of sippy cups to try with her because apparently I couldn't find the 'perfect' one for Truman? I don't even remember that ever being an issue. Perhaps Cecelia will take a cup better than she did a bottle at first. Since now we own 10 billion types of bottles (because of CC) and 10 billion types of cups (because of T). Yes, 10 billion each. It's insane.
Love sitting my big girl in her high chair, scattering some finger foods across the tray and letting her go to town. I will usually feed her with a spoon at least twice per day if not three times and I've found that (duh) it's a lot easier to feed her BEFORE I eat my own food or else it's way too much going on at once. Feeding myself, feeding a baby, picking up numerous spoons/cups/food-related items from the ground, tending to a toddler who refuses to eat 50% of the time, etc etc. It's a lot. So if I can sit with CC about 20 minutes before the rest of us actually eat, and take the time to feed her it seems to go much better. And then she can still dink around with her finger foods and cup and her FAVORITE banana toothbrush while we eat. Win-win.
Any ideas for fun baby-friendly foods that you've tried and loved? I'm not quite ready to plop down some of our pepperoni pizza in front of her on pizza night or anything, but I'm all for moving her towards big-people food.
I've seen this project on Pinterest for some time now and have been meaning to make a wooden growth chart for ages. And finally! I actually did it. And honestly, it was not difficult at all. I cannot believe these are going for $100 a pop on Etsy. Sure, they were a project that took a few evenings but it was a lot of fun for me to make them for our kids. Love the end result.
They love it, too.
So if you want to make your own giant rulers here is the scoop:
-You will need a 1"x10"x6' board. I got ours from Home Depot and at first I was going to do one ruler for all kids, but then when I realized these boards were $4.79 each I decided to splurge. Wanted to make sure Nate knew that a project like this doesn't mean we are necessarily done having children. Could always make a third ruler down the road, FYI. ;) I tried to find an old, shabby wooden board for us to use in our garage but they were all too warped. I'm glad I bought these new.
-You can stain the boards like I did or keep them natural. I really like a lot of the pins that show the rulers being VERY true to life. Meaning, I'm sure they didn't stain the boards and they used stencils to make the font a perfect ruler font. I did not go this route, though, and wanted my charts to be a little more personalized.
-You'll need a paint pen to mark on the boards. I used Sharpie's brand and it was fine, and was $3.50 from Home Depot. They also have it at Joanns. It's oil based and easy to use. I was torn about using a different color for the actual height markings for my kids compared to the ruler itself but I went with white for all and it looks fine.
-Then all you need is something to hang the boards--I picked up a few triangle hooks and Nate used one on each board. They were $4.60 for a pack of two.
Which means I spent about $19 on these guys. It took me a total of 3 hours to make plus hanging them up after that.
And now for the procedure itself.
1. I lightly sanded the boards and then stained them a dark brown that we already had. Staining wood is really cool but really messy. This took me about 30 minutes total for both boards.
2. The next night I got out one of Nate's corner level thingies (yes that is a word) and measured off the tick marks. Now this is the trickiest part, in my opinion. You have to decide BEFORE you draw anything where you are going to hang these bad boys. We measured our baseboards to be 8" and figured that if we started the bottom of the board two inches up from there we'd be good. Does that make sense? I didn't want the '1' to be right at the bottom but I needed it to be pretty close. So I marked everything off after deciding on that pivotal point. We had two inches of blank space on our wall, and then two inches before the first foot began on the board because of how tall our baseboards are.
3. This is when I decided that my growth charts were not going to be as 'perfect' as the ones on Pinterest. I HATE stencils and never ever use them for things. I'm all about free handing even if it's not perfect, so that is what I did for my numbers. Just eyeballed it and went from there.
4. Then I decided that I needed more tick marks than just every-other-inch. I fattened up the numbers to my liking and this whole part of the tick marks and numbers took me 2 hours.
5. The third night I grabbed Truman and Cecelia's baby books and 'cheated' by adding all of these heights right onto my boards. I think it's kind of funny that I have their birth heights on there since obviously, they were not standing up next to the boards to be measured. But I like to have the markings start at the beginning, then I chose 4 months, 9 months, 1 year, 18 months, 2 years, 2.5 years-ish, and will do 3 years to get us started. Whew! I didn't do a line for each measurement here---just wrote right on the board instead. This took maybe 15 minutes max. I was nervous about this part of it because none of my inspiration pictures online showed any heights written on the boards. It seemed like the perfect stenciled ones were all for show and never actually measured the kids growing up. But alas, I like the way it looks with each entry!
6. I originally got the 10" boards because I thought they would be wide enough to add my kids' names to the rulers like this. But I ran out of room and was bummed that I couldn't personalize the rulers for each of my babes. So then I decided to head to Joann's Fabrics and I picked up these wooden letters that were $5 each. I stained them to match the rulers and let them sit overnight. This took about 15 minutes.
7. Again with the personalization, I had to write the kids names on the letters to make it more 'special' somehow. I did tick marks on there, too. The 'C' had some weird defect where it wouldn't take stain at the top so I tried to blend that in with the writing.
8. Time to hang it all up! This is where Nate saved me because I am NOT good with numbers or levels. He had to make sure he hung the triangle hooks in back (that he added for me) in the exact right spot. It was sort of chaos to hang these but we had a lot of helpers, obviously.
Helping daddy with a level.
She is not amused by big brother reading her a book.
9. FINISHED!!!!
I love that we could move these around our house and not lose the precious growth measurements of our children. My mom kept track of my height and my brother's height directly on their wall. And now I believe she has that part covered up by a large protective, clear, plastic shell. But it can't move with them if they ever go. And again---could totally add more rulers. Or you could do one ruler for the whole house. You could make it more 'professional' looking by using a stencil for the font and being really meticulous with the length of the hash marks. But I did it this way and it turned out how I had hoped.
Do growth charts make anyone else choke up a little bit? Look at how fast my kids are growing already! Can't imagine them getting up near that six foot line, but I know it will be soon.
