Making Your Own Baby Food

I’m a second-time mom but a first-time baby food maker. I bought all of Zuzu’s food. I bought Bear’s too until I finally decided that now that I’m a stay-at-home mom I should cook and mush a few things.

Here’s what you’ll go through when you make your own baby food.

Stage 1: Research. You KNOW that baby food is simple and straightforward: just cook it and mush it. But you’ll still read everything you can find about it. Because you’re psyched out by the rules: no honey! No cow’s milk! This Puffs container specifically says my baby can’t eat Puffs until he crawls! and you don’t want to be the mom who does it wrong. Am I allowed to boil? Or does boiling make all the nutrients go away? I’m pretty sure I’m not allowed to use a microwave … You’ll feel like the biggest dork in the world reading “recipes” for baby food. You’ll read an actual recipe for Peas. The recipe goes something like this: peas. It talks a little bit about cooking and mushing. You read all the recipes because you find it comforting.

Stage 2: Making baby food. “Making your own baby food is so easy!” all the websites say. But is it as easy as putting little Gerbers containers into a grocery cart? NOPE. It still takes time and requires WASHING DISHES. Plus figuring out the storage part. How much to refrigerate and how much to freeze?

Stage 3: Pride. Your heart will swell with it when you stand back to view the fruits of your labor: A bunch of Tupperwares filled with cooked and mushed food, carefully labeled and ready for the fridge and freezer. You’ll feel like you’ve entered a special Mommy Club.

Stage 4: Feeding your baby. Only about five percent of all that food you cooked and mushed and labeled and stored will make it from the baby’s mouth to his tummy. The rest will go on his clothes, his face, and in his hair. And some of it will just get thrown away. Of the five percent he eats, he’ll hate most of it, tolerate some of it, and actually enjoy about two percent of it. When your baby does enjoy it, you’ll believe it’s because you prepared it so well and made it with love.  You’ll tell yourself how silly those thoughts are, but you’ll still think it.

Stage 5: Experimentation. Your baby’s enjoyment of two percent of the baby food will inspire you to concoct delicious combinations that you’re certain will bring him the same pleasure. You add things like quinoa. And dates. He’ll love it! It’s so good for him! How about a sprinkle of cinnamon?

Stage 6: Disillusionment. Your baby hated everything. Your kitchen is messy and you are tired and you have TONS OF THIS STUFF. Besides a baby, who would want to eat this healthy, bland goop? A pig? You don’t have a pig.

Stage 7: Back to reality. Bananas. Bananas are the best baby food ever. Avocados. Apple sauce. You sigh with relief … maybe baby food is easy after all.

Nursing a baby

Baby Sensory Play

Zuzu’s been doing a lot of art and sensory play this summer. I let Bear get pretty close to the action, as evidenced by this picture of him watching baking soda and vinegar eruptions:

 

But it didn’t really occur to me to let him participate, in a hands-on way, until I began seeing posts on Pinterest like 5 Baby Safe Messy Sensory Bins. I started itching to let Bear try. Oh, it would be so cute! But I was a little nervous about it. The clean-up part didn’t scare me; I just wasn’t totally convinced it was in my baby’s best interests. I’m not a super high-strung mother, but, on the other hand, that’s exactly what makes me susceptible to going overboard with things like this. I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt Bear if he sucked on his fingers once. But supposing things got out of hand and we ended up in the emergency room getting his stomach pumped. Then my conversation with the doctor would go like this:

Doctor: “His stomach was full of multicolored cornstarch.”
Me: “Right. That’s what he was eating.”
Doctor: “Any idea how he got access to it?”
Me: “Well, I stripped him down to his diaper, and then put him in a bin full of it.”
Doc: “You put him in a bin full of multicolored cornstarch?”
Me: “Yes. Cornstarch and food coloring and water. You know … just to see what he would do.”
Doc: “Did it occur to you that he would probably eat it?”
Me: “Well, yes.”
Doctor: Considers whether to calmly advise me to stop putting my baby in bins full of cornstarch, or just to go ahead and call child protective services.

Then I’d end up in an article about the dangers of Pinterest convincing idiot moms like me that babies should do finger painting and whatnot. Because, truthfully, ALL OF LIFE is a sensory activity for babies! You don’t really have to do anything other than what pretty much all parents of babies everywhere always do. In fact, here’s MY list of baby sensory activities:

7 Sensory Activities for Babies

1. CARPET

Step 1: If your baby is wearing mittens, remove them.
Step 2: Put your baby on the carpet.

My baby sits on the carpet for minutes at a time. This is one of our favorite sensory activities because there’s virtually no cost and NO CLEAN-UP!

2. WATER

Otherwise known as giving your baby a bath. Oh—was I not the first person to think of this one? Most babies love to splash in the water. And if they don't, they have to do it anyway at bath time, so … suckas! Water sensory activity coming your way!

3. SKIN

This one sounds weird, but stick with me. Babies actually love to touch other people’s skin. All you have to do is hold your baby. And voila! Skin contact! We do this one all the time at my house!

4. FOOD

Materials needed 
Pureed food
Bib
Small spoon
Large tarp to cover the floor, if desired
Sheets of plastic to cover the furniture, if desired
20-30 rags for clean-up
Change of clothes for baby, you, and any nearby siblings

I like to buy a variety of food so that my baby can experience the different flavors. This is one of the messier sensory activities. No, like really messy. Like, if food weren’t necessary for survival I would probably just skip this one.

5. HARDWOOD FLOORS

The most direct way to give your baby a hardwood floor sensory experience is to sit him on the hardwood floor when he is still at the stage where he topples over frequently. Boom! How did THAT feel, baby?

6. FABRIC

When my baby was born, we received a ton of fabric sensory objects as gifts. UPDATE: several readers have commented that fabric sensory objects are usually called baby blankets.

7. PLASTIC OBJECTS

The best kinds of plastic objects are brightly colored and don’t have any sharp edges or small removable pieces. I’ve found a huge variety in the baby food and pet food aisles of Target, the hardware store, the dollar store etc. I like the ones with bells or other noise-making features. You can get them online, too. The common name for them is toys.


Despite my mocking, I still wanted Bear to play with goo. I really really wanted him to. I couldn’t stop thinking about how cute it would be. So I started small. I tinted plain yogurt and put a couple dollops on his tray and it WAS. SO CUTE. He stared at it like some sort of magic had just occurred. Then he slowly touched it, and soon he was smearing it all over the place. So far, so good.

Then I did it. Multicolored cornstarch goo. I didn’t put him directly in the bin like I’d daydreamed about; both kids sat on the kitchen floor with the bin between them. But by the end, Bear was sitting in a puddle of the goo and completely covered from the chest down. He LOVED it. And he didn’t ingest a drop! I gave him a pacifier to have in his mouth while he played, so that helped prevent taste testing.

So yeah, we’re gonna do more. I like the colored spaghetti idea ...

7 Things I Wish Kids Knew About Playing With Adults

When I was a young adult, before kids, before marriage, I didn’t like playing with kids all that much. I didn’t know what they wanted me to do. It all seemed so physical and so chaotic. Now that I have a daughter who’s going on three, I understand what kids want at playtime much better, and I can relax and enjoy taking part in it.

And I can also laugh about the elements of playing with kids that are sometimes stressful. Here are seven things I wish kids knew about playing with adults.

1. Death throes are exhausting. It’s kind of fun to go through the rigamarole of pretending to get shot, like … once. When you shoot me incessantly, I’m very quickly going to start muttering “ahhhh you got me again” absentmindedly while thinking about dinner. Plus, didn’t I tell you I had impenetrable scales?

2. I really want my imaginary characters to influence your imaginary world the way your characters do. This makes it more fun for me. So if I say my character has impenetrable scales, that means shooting me won’t work.

3. Stories are way better when the heroes encounter actual challenges that make them stop and think and get creative. I’ve never understood the fun of the hero winning automatically and immediately. For instance, if the villain has impenetrable scales, try other ways of conquering her besides shooting. Tickle her into a laughter coma? Use a shrinking spell to make her the size of a fly? Etc.

4. Watching is boring. You’re cute and wonderful and it’s super gratifying when you want me to watch, but I’d so much rather be involved or else doing my own thing. So if you want me to watch, I’m gonna grab another adult to be my watching buddy, ‘k? Then I can smile and applaud you while chatting.

5. Rules are rules. You aren’t special; the rules apply to you. Also, the rules are what make the games fun.

6. There’s this thing called Tired. I know you don’t understand what that means. But someday you will, and then you’ll know why I CAN’T push you across the floor in the laundry basket anymore.

7. I’m jealous that you can be so carefree when you play. I’m constantly seeing seven steps ahead of everything you do—hearing a crack!, a stunned silence, tears, trip to the ER, call to parents, Facebook post with a picture of the cast, etc. That’s what makes me an adult. And that’s okay, that’s my role. You just go have fun.

What do YOU wish kids knew about playing with adults?

19 Things Pinterest Has Taught Me About Mothering Small Children

What Pinterest has taught me so far about arts & crafts with small children:

1. You have to buy the neon colors of food coloring. You will get very bored with red, blue, green and yellow, and everyone else has the neon ones.
2. You are going to use a lot of food coloring.
3. You are going to be very familiar with the color that results from blending all of the food colorings. This color should be called “dinosaur skin.”
4. There are 349 recipes for homemade play dough, and counting.
5. Making homemade play dough means grabbing any two common household ingredients, mixing them together, and saying “See! I bet a little kid would think this sludge is awesome!”
6. Next, add food coloring.
7. Next, add glitter.
8. Next, add things like Kool-Aid and spices. This makes the play dough smell incredibly yummy, so good luck trying to teach any youngsters NOT to eat it.
9. In fact, everything is supposed to smell yummy, including paint, dried rice, and slime. So just keep adding Kool-Aid.
10. Your vocabulary will include words like “oobleck,” “cloud dough,” “quiet book,” “sensory bin.”
11. You should probably get a sensory bin.
12. Other euphemisms for sludge, besides play dough, include sand, snow, clay, foam, floam, magic mud, rainbow slush, etc.
13. Use the baking soda + vinegar combination all the time, in everything. Most of your dough, sand, snow, clay etc. will include baking soda anyway. So when your kids get bored, start squirting on vinegar. Now you can add the words “fizzing!” "erupting!" "exploding" in front of dough, sand, snow, clay, etc.
14. Buy a 13-pound bag of baking soda from Sam’s Club, and vinegar by the gallon.
15. Fortunately, the spills that happen during art and sensory play are already made out of the things you would normally use to clean up spills.
16. I can’t believe you BOUGHT that thing from Crayola. Didn’t you see the DIY version using just baking soda and food coloring?
17. You will enjoy the art and sensory activities every bit as much as your kids. Or more. In fact, you might still be sitting on the kitchen floor squishing sludge through your fingers after your kids have wandered away.
18. You will feel out of the loop for a long time while the mommy bloggers keep referencing trending arts & crafts projects with phrases like “you’ve probably seen melting crayon art everywhere,” and “there are a million versions of sharpie tie dye on Pinterest.”
19. You will reach a proud moment where you start to feel in the loop. Yeah, I totally have seen melting crayon art everywhere.