Ivy's First Halloween

Ivy can't quite walk yet (very close, though) and has very few teeth, so trick or treating is next to pointless this year, but Jason and I figured at the very worst, it may be an excuse for us to re-introduce ourselves to the neighbors.  That...and I really wanted an excuse to sew together a costume.

I am still looking for a little cow bell to attach to the body suit to finish the costume, but I couldn't keep myself from putting her in the outfit to take a picture.

Baby Dal

Ivy's been eating solids for awhile now and has started to become a more discriminating eater.  Where she used to eat anything that we put in front of her, she now will not eat without some form of cereal, crispy snack, or cracker in her hand.  This is true with one exception, baby dal. 

In my early research on feeding baby and making homemade baby food, I found a great book with some good guidance and some great recipes for infants and toddlers.  For those of you who have young ones (Monica, hopefully you can use this one), I highly recommend this recipe - if you like it, check out the referenced book from which I copied it.

Baby Dal
From Cooking for Baby by Lisa Barnes. It seemed like Ivy could sit and eat gallons of this at a sitting. Because we're always trying to use our CSA produce, we often used our carrots, any potato type, any onion type, and our Costco bought chicken broth [though, not low-sodium]. We froze it in a silicon brownie tray of 1-ounce squares and then vacuum-sealed them in 6-8 ounce portions for reheating later.
1/3 cup red lentils
12 baby carrots
3 small red potatoes
2 Tbsp green onions, chopped
2 cups low-sodium broth
¼ tsp curry powder
¼ tsp ground coriander
¼ tsp ground tumeric
¼ tsp ground cumin
Pick over lentils, discarding misshapen ones. Rinse and drain.
Finely chop carrots and potatoes.
In a saucepan over medium-high heat, combine all ingredients. Cover, reduce heat to medium, and simmer until vegetables are tender, about 20 minutes. Stir every 5 minutes and check to make sure stock is not all absorbed. Add more if necessary.
Depending on your baby's age and chewing ability, serve whole, mash with potato masher, or puree in a food processor, adding water as needed to make a coarse puree.

Philps Cinema

We were busy in early October constructing Jason's dream home theater.  Thanks in great part to the help from Jason's parents, the project, for all intents and purposes, is complete.  I keep urging my husband to create a blog post to show the improvements, as I am certain I cannot do it justice, but nothing so far.

Here is a picture of Ivy enjoying the new set up.  She looks a little distraught, but that's because she had been having a little trouble with reoccurant ear injections, new teeth, and, on this particular day, a severely high temperature due to a virus and bad sore throat.

Look for a future post and very likely an invitation to enjoy our new theater.

Uh-Oh

The payoff is at the end of the video...wait for it.


Below is also the first attempt to get her to say Uh-Oh, though she quickly became distracted by the picture of the little baby on the cell phone in front of her.

First Word?

Does 'uh-oh' count as a first word?  Yesterday Ivy copied me after she dropped one of her toys unexpectedly, saying 'uh-oh', very clearly mocking me.

She also has mastered putting her shapes into her shape toy.