Baby hummus

Today I made chickpeas for Thomas. I started last night by soaking 3/4 cup dried chickpeas. Then this morning I drained the water, added fresh water and boiled them for two hours. I put them and the water they boiled in in the blender and added about a tablespoon of butter and a tablespoon of olive oil for flavor, consistency, and fat content. These were much more difficult to blend than I expected, which is silly, because I've made hummus in the blender before and I remember it was very difficult. I probably should have tried the food mill. I ended up adding quite a bit of extra water to make it blend up nicely. Thomas ate quite a bit of this baby (garlic-free, sad) hummus. I let it stay a little lumpier than the stuff I've made before.

I made him a smoothie today, thinking about what benefits my throat when it's sore. Recipe: 1 cube sweet potato, 1 Tbsp plain yogurt, a little breast milk, and water. He ate almost all of that. It's been a relief today to find things he can swallow without hurting his throat. I also put cinnamon in his oatmeal and applesauce mix.

For his snack today he also had all finger foods: cheerios, kiwi cubes, and mozzarella. I took the shredded kind and pressed it into tiny balls -- about the diameter of my pinky finger. He liked that.

Green veggies at six and seven months

Green vegetables that Thomas ate between six and seven months old, all steamed until very soft, blended, and frozen:

• Green beans
• Sugar snap peas
• Zucchini (one of his all-time favorites)
• Broccoli
• Peas (he doesn't care for these, unfortunately: takes after his daddy) [edit: actually these were microwaved, according to the frozen package directions]
  

Easiest protein baby food ever

Silken tofu. Yep. Don't get the firm kind, it doesn't blend up well. But silken tofu works right out of the package (just stir it a little to break it up), and is really high in protein. And Thomas loves it. I wouldn't freeze it though.

Almost as easy: egg yolk. They can't have the whites until they're one year old, but yolks are ok. You hard-boil an egg, peel it and remove the yolk. Then mash with a fork with a little breast milk or formula (water doesn't really work here: my chemistry intuition, such as it is, is telling me it needs the fats and stuff of the milk to really dissolve) and serve. One is 55 calories (right now that's >10% of the calories Thomas needs from solids every day) and has lots of protein.

Thomas started eating both of these at about 7.5-8 months. He probably could have had the tofu earlier, but they don't sell silken tofu at our local grocery store, so that was harder.

Even before that, at almost 7 months, I gave him lentils. Lentils don't need to be presoaked; I just covered dried lentils with water, covered the pot, boiled them for 30 minutes, checked to be sure they were very soft. Then I put them with the water in the blender and blended it up. He likes them mixed with rice cereal or barley cereal. Baby food doesn't get much cheaper than lentils and rice cereal.

Baby food adventures: Kale and kiwi at 8 (almost 9) months

Consider this a temporary thematic overhaul. Not that I've had any discernible theme so far. For now, though, I'm going to make an effort to keep track of my baby-directed food efforts.

This week Thomas is fussy about food. He doesn't want anybody putting spoons or his syringes for his medicines in his mouth. The doctor says he has a sore throat. He accepts cheerios, however. So I decided to try cutting up a kiwi. Up till now he's been decidedly "eh" about finger foods, but he really went for the kiwi.

I cut it into fourths lengthwise, used a grapefruit knife to cut off the peel, and cut it into tiny cubes. He let me put the first one into his mouth partway and clipped off a tiny bit, chewed and swallowed. Then his face lit up and he opened his mouth WIDE, WIDE. So kiwi is a hit. He ended up eating about an eighth of a kiwi.

He also had kale tonight. The kale I steamed for probably about 10 mins in the bamboo steamer and ran through the blender, then froze in ice cube trays. It was actually pretty easy to blend smoothly, compared with some of the other things I've made (like broccoli). He seemed to really like it -- it's one of the few foods he'll open up for this week. I mixed one cube with about 3 tablespoons rice cereal and added water until it was smooth enough.

Kale and kiwi are both supposed to be really healthy foods. And this is a bad food week.

I have four pounds of peanut butter on my desk.

Since Thomas was born, I've started to eat at the computer, where I spend my breakfast and lunch time trying to catch up on email or work on... stuff that I'm working on. I also eat a snack before bed every night. Breastfeeding has made my appetite go haywire. Between these three solo meals every day, I eat peanut butter almost once per day.

Matt doesn't eat at home much: dinner every night and then on the weekends. Pretty much every Saturday for the past couple of months we've had this conversation.

Matt says, "I'm going to get some lunch."

"Good idea."

After a long pause for rummaging, he says, "Where's the peanut butter?"

"Oh. Probably on my desk."

Last week Matt went shopping. I think he's trying to send me a message, because when he bought the peanut butter on the grocery list, he bought a jar that, at the least, is inconvenient to leave on the desk. It has that metal rim around the top inside. It's a daycare-sized tub of PB.

He's won this round. But I'm stubborn. I won't give up without a fight.

So far the Chambers' prayer book has 1 invitatory psalm, 3 rotating psalms, 1 regular and 1 lenten canticle, and 7 readings: one baptismal, one for Ash Wednesday/Lent, 2 for Lent/Holy Week, 1 for Holy Week/Triduum, 1 for Holy Saturday/Triduum, and 1 for Easter. Also the Magnificat, intercessions, Our Father, and conclusion.

By Easter I want to have done 2 more psalms, the Easter canticle, and at least 2 additional sets of readings for the Easter season.

I remember having a conversation with one of my Ph.D. student friends a couple of years ago about her advisor. She was having trouble getting in to meet with him.

"The problem is, he trusts me too much," I remember her saying. "He knows even if he doesn't have time to meet with me, he's sure I'll do everything well anyway."

Being, probably, a little more naive, I imagined basking in a similar degree of (merited) confidence, and it didn't seem like too hard of a problem. After all, she really does do everything well.

Now I feel like that's my difficulty. Not the confidence, although the silence from my committee, and, to some extent, from my loving family and friends is getting loud enough to hear with the dishwasher running (as it so often is).

No, the problem is doing everything well.

Is it because I'm a woman that I let my roles swallow me up, until I am emptied out from them all, and lost? Or do men feel this way?

I have paid for my place. I am emptied out with the cost of it. I will not give it up for any man. So the heroine says in Paladin of Souls. Yes. But I am no heroine, and nothing is coming in to fill me up again. In Paladin of Souls, it is the gods' grace that does so. I must be emptying myself out for the wrong place.

I don't think I even have time to find the right place for kenosis. But I do wonder if this is why Jesus' crucified body so often has a feminine aspect.

It's almost like Thomas has labels for his days. He has a secret calendar stashed in his playpen to give character to each day (and make Mamma's life fully unpredictable).

On that calendar, in the distinctive baby-script Thomas uses, Monday said: "Visitors. Cute." Tuesday said: "Sleep." Wednesday said, "No Sleep. Play With Mamma."

Today seems to be marked, "I'm Independent and Easygoing." I can only be grateful.