In which Silas makes pizza

Last night, Silas made pizza. He cut the veggies:
We rolled out the dough together, and then Si put on the toppings:
It turned out delicious!
Thanks for your help, Silas!

Best. Muffins. Ever. (and the bears like them too)

A while ago, I catalogued a kid's cooking book at work that included a recipe for peanut butter and jelly muffins. I thought they sounded interesting and made a mental note to try them sometime. This past Monday was a work holiday, and Drew and I had the same idea for breakfast: Muffins.

I googled PB & J muffins and went with the first recipe on the list. They did not disappoint. The peanut butter is mixed in with the batter. Half the batter is put into the cups, followed by a teaspoon of jelly and another heaping of the batter. Eaten fresh from the oven: warm, jelly-filled goodness.
Silas invited the three bears to join us for a teddy bear breakfast picnic. They gave the paws up to the muffins too.

Daily Bread

Thanks to the generosity of Beth (at my work), we are the proud owners of a bread maker. We now bake all of our own bread (7 loafs in the last 7 days!), which has been really fun. One does have to get used to its strange shape due to the the kind of pan the machine uses, but the bread is undeniably delicious. We've made several different kinds --oat, french, and cranberry walnut(pictured). Silas helps by adding certain ingredients and pushing the start button. Later on, when we're eating the bread, we tell him "that's the bread you helped make."

More on the feeding and care of Mr. Bear

Just look at those teeth! With 16 teeth now, Silas can eat a lot of the same foods that we do. There have been a few surprises regarding what Si will eat or will not eat.

Here are a few things I was absolutely convinced he would love, but instead has rejected the multiple times I've offered them:

Peanut butter (go figure)
Cheese (clearly he was not born in WI)
Butter (Seriously, Silas?)
Scrambled or fried eggs (but boiled eggs are one of his favorite foods)

And on the list of foods I thought he'd hate but instead loves:
Raw broccoli
Fresh salad greens

He's already a better vegetarian then I am.

I was going to write more about language since he's been doing really well with that lately, but I think I'll save that for another post. Pretty soon, the list of signs I keep on the side will disappear since I haven't been updating it anyways. He has picked up several more signs, like thank you and scared, and he still uses baby sign often. However, we've been mostly concentrating on spoken words now that he seems ready to vocalize more.

So, in closing, I will leave you with an extra picture. It is strange because we've never emphasized gender specific toys, but regardless, he loves "boy" things like balls and vehicles. Here he is, fulfilling a gender stereotype, playing with his truck, or "cah" as he calls it:

Give Peace (and hemp milk) a Chance

Just wanted to share a picture of my most recent knitting project. I designed this tank top as part of Yoko Ono's Imagine Peace Project. More pictures can be seen here and more info on Yoko's project is available here.

It was great to be off of work since July 3rd. Alas, I went back today. I was a little nervous about how Silas would do since I was with him so much for 3 1/2 weeks, but he did fine. This was also the first day he didn't have breastmilk while I was at work. Yep, after a year of pumping at work (twice a day till he turned a year and once a day since then), I've retired my pump. Silas has really taken to hemp milk, so that's what he drinks when I'm away. When I'm home, it's still nurse on demand. So far, this seems to be going well. It was strange to leave for work without my pump. I kept feeling like I'd forgotten something. And it was a bit sad not pumping as I'd always felt better being apart from him knowing that I was still providing milk for him. Still, the time has come, and the most important thing is that Silas is okay with it. Drew reports that he drank about 8 ounces of hemp milk, which is a good amount. I'm so glad we finally found a suitable milk for him that he actually likes!

Holy Molars, Batman!

When we took Silas to the Doc a few weeks ago for his regular check-up, she told us he was getting a bunch of his molars in at the same time. Yep. It's pretty hard to see them because when I tell him to say "ahhh," he'll open his mouth but stick out his tongue at the same time. However, when I stick my finger in there (and beware, it's like sticking your head into the mouth of a lion), I feel molars on all 4 sides. They've just recently started to cut through the gums. He has been understandably irritable. Lots of up and down mood swings, biting behavior, and a couple nights of severe restlessness. The good news, according to the Doc, is that he should be done with teething by age 2. So, only about 8 more months of miserable gum pain for the baby. Great.
In other truly good news, Drew and I managed to go to a movie (a matinée in an actual movie theater!) last Thursday. This was the first time we've been out to a movie since Silas was born and the first time we've ever used a babysitter (well, Patrick is really more like family then a babysitter). We saw the new Batman movie, which was big, loud, and exciting --a perfect choice to see on the big screen. Thanks to Uncle Patrick, Silas survived the 3 hours without mom and dad just fine. We may have to make this a semi-regular activity, though we're not inclined to want to leave him much longer than the length of a movie. It's nice to have a bit of a break, believe me, but we love being with our Bear too! By the time we got back at about 6:15, he was definitely ready to have mom home again to eat dinner with and begin his nighttime routine.
Oh, yeah, and the pictures: Like his parents, Silas is a big fan of the starch food group. Noodles, just like bread and rice, are a hit.

I Love Bread

I love bread.

I love bread, as well.

In addition, I also love bread.

You got something to say about it? Well then...

...let's talk about it over some bread!

It's the simple things in life

Since moving to WA, our family has been without a very basic and essential household item--a table we can all sit and eat at. We never felt we had room for one given the design of our house. Drew and I got in the habit of eating dinner on the couch. Now that Silas is eating "real" food, however, we feel it's important to eat together as a family as much as impossible, and the small counter we were crowding around just wasn't cutting it. So, we finally decided to do a bit of rearranging and we bought ourselves a great wooden table. We love it!
Here's Master Silas sitting at the head of the table:
We also got a new hook-on high chair for Silas, so as you can see, he is seated right at the table with us now. For several months, he's had the unfortunate habit of kicking and shaking his other high chair. This included shaking the high chair until it rocked and when we added the table to the mix, kicking it away from himself. So the change in chairs was necessary both for his safety and our sanity.
Another simple thing in life that we are not taking for granted today: Our boy is eating well again! It is SUCH a relief! Today, he had rice and an entire avocado for lunch. And as you can see, he's able to eat peas again, which makes him very happy.
He gets very playful and amusing at mealtimes:
He loves this sorting drum but it wasn't a great idea to give it to him at the table, as he later threw it on the floor, and narrowly missed hitting our wi-fi modem. Oops!

I've made coasters (see pictures of them here) and will hopefully make place mats to accent our lovely table soon!

Chef Silas

What you see pictured here is a daily occurrence in our house. As long as he's not too rough with the cookbooks we really like, we don't discourage Silas from taking them down off the shelf, disbursing them across the floor, and paging through them to find the most scrumptious apple turnover recipe, or to glean other cooking hints. Since he can already turn the stove on, we figure, he should know how to bake us bread. He's gotta start earning his keep.

Seriously though, he loves books and cookbooks are no exception. Playing with them may actually buy us a coveted 5 or even, wait for it, 10 MINUTES to do some dishes, clean up a bit or even, gasp, make a cup of tea and enjoy it, without having to chase him and stop him from eating some unknown substance off the floor, or from crawling head first into a wall (yes it's happened). So , even though we SHOULD move the cookbooks up out of reach, we just haven't seemed to do it yet.

Other forms of baby-proofing around the house are now in full swing, however. I'll be talking more about that in the coming weeks. I leave you with this update today: We tried the dreaded avocado again for Si's dinner and this time, about face, he LOVED it. No gagging, no tears, no head shaking, no clenched jaw, and no pained looks. He just gobbled it down. Yessss!

"Real" Food

Introducing new foods to babies, as most of you know, is a matter of trial and error. When we first started Silas on solids, I naively thought that I'd make all, or at least most of his food fresh. But after he repeatedly rejected anything that didn't come out of a jar (except bananas), I all but gave up. Food sent through the baby food mill, while perfectly pureed by adult standards, met with gags and tears. With the successful introduction of Breakfast O's, however I've now begun again to offer him other finger foods. In the picture, Silas is eating a piece of mango, which he actually does like, though you'd never know it from his expression. He's also eating cooked green beans, blueberries, brown rice and the occasional teething biscuit. He does not like cooked carrots, potato, or pears (unless they come out of a jar of course). And, unlike his buddy Alden, Avocados are a no-go. We'll try them again some time when we're feeling adventurous.

10 months old! --the breakfast O challenge

Si is 10 months old today. Wow! So much is happening for this little guy, perhaps the most notable of which is that he's now eating hard cereal. We've wanted to start him on something like this for a while but were faced with the challenge of finding an organic wheat-free O-shaped cereal that didn't have added sugar. Not an easy task! Finally we discovered Barbara's Breakfast Os and Silas loves them! This is the first time he's fed himself, and although more than a few fall to the floor, he is improving every day. We hope to introduce more finger foods soon.

Silas is also kinda-sorta crawling. He can get around now, though he's still rather clumsy and slow.

And then there's the teething. Silas still only has 4 teeth. He hasn't had any new teeth in 3 months. He goes through spurts where his gums really seem to bother him. He's been up nursing way more than usual the last 4 nights or so and I suspect this is because his mouth is sore. Unfortunately, I can't feel any additional teeth when I massage his gums, but they are definitely swollen. Keep your fingers crossed and let's hope he's cut a few more before he turns 11 months!

Our Family Thanksgiving

Did you all have a wonderful thanksgiving? We had a great day and we hope you did too! Our little family visited with friends and neighbors, all of whom were charmed by Silas. Dad baked a sweet potato pie and a green bean casserole. Silas got to eat a bit of baked sweet potato (loved it) and boiled potato (not so much). Mom is enjoying getting to spend four days off in a row with her boys! Today we talked to our families back in Wisconsin. We will be seeing them all next month when we take a cross-country train ride to the Midwest for the Christmas holiday. Wow, Silas is already looking forward to it!

One more thing: All of our Silas-supported charities, toy registry and a book wish list are now posted on the sidebar on your left, right under the links to other blogs/web pages of interest.

Got Hemp?

Got Hemp?, originally uploaded by knitbook.

Dad's been on a hemp-milk kick lately (it's yummy!). So young, and it already looks like Silas has got the hang of product placement. Well, at least it's an earth-healthy choice!

Carrots

Another messy meal: We began stirring vegetables into Silas's rice cereal a few weeks ago. Just a few days ago, we tested out a pear/raspberry combo (his first fruit!). So far, out of everything we've tried, carrots are his favorite.

Sleep update: Silas now goes to sleep between 6:15 and 7:00 pm. Mom and dad don't mind having a bit of time to themselves in the evening! He's not sleeping through the night yet, but that's ok. It takes little energy for me to lift my arm and position myself to feed him. Normally, within a few minutes, we are both back to sleep. Si is a bit of a bed-hog though! Now that he can move around a bit, he'll often press himself against my back while we sleep. I may not have a lot of space, but I still sleep well with my darling boys (Drew, Si and often Sobin as well) surrounding me.

Please Mom, may I have some more?

Yes, it's official, as of yesterday: We've started Silas on "solids." Right now, he's eating about a tablespoon of rice cereal mixed with 3 tablespoons of breast milk every morning, which makes a messy (and apparently delicious) porridge. He loves it, although he's still getting used to the concept of swallowing it. Quite a bit still ends up outside of his digestive tract, but he opens his mouth quite eagerly for each spoonful and laughs as well when he sees more food is heading his way. So, a good start to solid foods, all in all.