3 Reasons Why a Naked Dinner is a Good Dinner

Alexa eats real food now...and by real I mean puréed veggie mush. I have learned a few lessons in our first week of veggiedom.

Lesson #1: Babies are messy eaters. Even if you think you have a neat eater on your hands check behind their ears and in their nose...somehow food always ends up there!

Lesson #2: Be prepared! Having a washcloth in the drawer NEXT to the high chair is not going to do anything for you when baby decides she wants to eat sweet potatoes with her whole body. A wet washcloth ON the high chair - now that's smart thinking!

Lesson #3: Orange veggies stain. Baby's wearing one of your favorite outfits? You better strip her down to the diaper if you ever plan on having her wear that outfit again! Every single bib, onesie and washcloth we've used this week now has orange spots all over it. Luckily, I immediately soaked the clothes so most of the stains came out of the clothes and bibs...the washcloths, forget about it. (*note to self - buying white washcloths for a baby, not your best idea ever.) Stick baby in the high chair just in her diaper and bib...clean up is a breeze!

Baby Antics #1

Babies like to pull tricks on their parents and family members. You know you've fallen prey to a little munchkin when the following has occurred...

The baby wakes up at an ungodly hour in the morning, crying, fussing and carrying on until everyone in the house is wide awake, playing with and cheering them up. Once this task has been accomplished then baby dictator decides it's time for a nap!

If this has happened to you, you should totally read The Boss Baby by Marla Frazee. It's basically the autobiography of your new life!

More Teething Tips

The teething process is just that, a process. So far we are going on two weeks of irritable, cranky, gum hurting baby. I wish these teeth would just pop through already! At our pediatrician's appointment on Friday we discovered that Alexa actually has FIVE teeth all trying to come in at the same time. FIVE! As if getting one tooth at a time isn't bad enough, she has to try and be an overachiever and get five at once! Well, this officially put me on the hunt for something to soothe her gums and help those teeth pop through. In Terrible, Horrible, Rotten, Evil Teething I talked about some different things that we had tried using as teethers...here are some new things that we have tried:

Bibs - Who knew that bibs not only caught the drool from teething, but also work as an awesome teether!
Carrots - Carrots are cold, hard, and AWESOME for soothing little teething gums. (I'm also hoping that they will help "encourage" the teeth to pop through!)

I have also bought some teething tablets (Osanit) and gum numbing gel (Dentinox). So far, I don't really think that the Dentinox works very well, but Alexa seems to like the Osanit teething tablets.

Things you shouldn't do while wearing a baby in a wrap...

A friend of mine gave me a bunch of baby stuff that her son had grown out of when she found out I was pregnant. Among all of the clothes, toys, bathtub, and array of other baby paraphernalia was a Moby Wrap. For those of you who, like me a few months ago, have no idea what the heck a Moby Wrap is or what you do with it, I'm here to tell you, I don't really know either, but I'm winging it and it seems to be going ok.

Apparently "baby wearing" is the new fad when it comes to baby transportation and baby carrying. You no longer need to use your arms to carry your child, you can just wear your baby, like your favorite blue sweater! This idea is both very strange and very appealing to me, so I attempted to figure out the Moby. It can't be that hard, right? Wrong!! The Moby Wrap is 10+ feet of very soft, comfy fabric that you have to fold, bunch, and wrap in a certain way to get it to a more manageable and baby friendly size. This took me weeks, literally, of aggravating practice to get the thing on the right way. Alexa was about nine weeks old when I finally felt comfortable enough to wear her in it, that and the fact that a gas pain induced screaming fit required me to wrap that thing like I'd never wrapped it before, and Voila! a functioning wrap and a very calm and happy baby. I'm not claiming to be a professional or anything, but I can now wrap it two ways: the Hug Hold and the Kangaroo Hold. My little bean burrito prefers to ride Kangaroo style so I wrap her up snug and we bounce on the gym ball or go for a walk, or just hang out around the house.

This is a picture of the Moby Wrap:

Now, as cool and functional as the Moby Wrap is, there are just some things a mom, well, this mom...has a great deal of difficulty doing. One of those things is eating or drinking. I've basically discovered that in order to eat anything while wearing my baby, it must be a solid, non-crumbling food. This is not leaving me with many options. I have so far dropped quinoa all over my sleeping baby, mashed potatoes have been found in her hair, and yogurt splattered on her cheek. This is not good. And I swear I am not that much of a slob! Pre-baby wearing I was really good at feeding myself. The only food I have been able to successfully eat and not get all over my baby is carrots. Maybe I've come up with the next popular postpartum diet:  wear your baby, eat only carrots and lose weight instantly!!

Hopefully I'll learn how to eat in a less sloppy way as I continue to wear my baby all over the place. Until then, maybe I should be the one wearing a bib?!