What's on the menu?

Feeding Kaylani is no easy task. Not even just the feeding part...all aspects of it. We've gotta dance around, sing, rotate through toys or other distractions just to get her to eat. That part we're actually used to by now. The hard part now is picking her food each meal. It's just not easy anymore.

Before, we used to grab any jar (or two) of baby food and give it to her. Vegetable, fruit, meat...all didn't matter as long as we had our distraction toys ready. Nowadays, we're lucky if she finishes one jar of food before she decides she's done with pureed food on a spoon. Now she wants what we're eating, or at the very least, something not pureed. That's the hard part.

All 3 meals are difficult because we have to pick something that she can eat (which is basically anything that doesn't contain nuts, honey, or umm...some other stuff that our doctor told us that I can't remember right now). If I had to pick one, I'd probably say breakfast is the hardest meal. Not on the weekends, but during the week. On the weekends, I'm home and cook breakfast (either waffles or eggs). On the weekdays, Mommy used to just drink a fruit smoothie. Now she's gotta make pancakes, waffles, eggs, or something else that Kaylani can grab and feed herself. Baby (or regular) oatmeal just doesn't cut it.

Lunch is usually out, and that's when we've gotta buy something for ourselves that she'll eat too. Pizza? Sure. Sandiwch? Sure. Something with rice? That works too. But it's not always that easy, and definitely not always that clean. No more soup and salad (which surprisingly, both Mommy and I like to eat for lunch). No more other things that may contain nuts. No more fast food from McDonald's, Wendy's, or Burger King. No more anything that might not be the healthies for Kaylani (including pizza if it's 2 or 3 days in a row).

Dinner's the same way. Now, when Mommy plans out the night, we gotta keep Kaylani in mind. Will she eat steak? Sure, if it's good meat and not too chewy. What can we marinate this chicken in? Nothing that has nuts or honey. How about sweet plaintain? She might not like it. Breakfast for dinner? Great idea, but that takes away from one of our breakfast options. How about no dinner at all? Won't work because Kaylani's gotta munch on something!

It's funny because I really do think it's great that she'll eat whatever we eat. I'm hoping this carries on for the rest of her life because I think it's great not to carry around food just for her. But sometimes, just sometimes, I wish she would eat her food and that's it. Sure would make life a little bit easier now. But no one ever said having a baby was easy. And anyone who does say that, probably doesn't have kids.

Foodertainment

We've created a monster. In doing so, we've also managed to turn ourselves into a pair of clowns. "Do I look like a clown? Am I hear to entertain you?" Yes. The answer to both is yes. Luckily the monster only comes out twice a day (usually).

Feeding Kaylani is no easy chore. She used to just sit there and eat her 2 to 4 ounces of food peacefully without a fight. We wouldn't have to play any games, or sing any songs, or make any funny faces to get her to open her mouth. But now? Now it's a different story. We have to do all of those things plus react quickly when she talks in "plbbbbbts" and sends food back at us. Then there's the constant reaching down to pick up whatever toy she dropped while again avoiding food being spit at us.

We had a few tricks up our sleeve for the rough days. Mommy could sing "you are my sunshine" to Kaylani and usually she'd open up (after the entire song was done of course). Or we could give her one of the high chair attached toys and she'd usually open up. Sometimes I could just sit and smile at her and she'd eventually smile back (and open her mouth). But lately, we've had to be a bit more original.

Tonight it was just Daddy and Kaylani for dinner. Now Mommy goes through similar things, but I don't think she's quite the sucker that Daddy is. When Kaylani would stop eating, Daddy would go get something new to entertain her with. Here's what it took to get Kaylani to eat 5oz of food:

1. Let her play with the 2nd container of food while feeding her the first (4 spoon fulls)
   
2. Let her play with one of the high chair attachments (2 spoon fulls)
   
3. Make funny faces at her until she laughed and opened her mouth (1 spoon fulls)
   
4. Let her play with the 2nd high chair attachment (0 spoon fulls)
   
5. Let her play with the house phone (5 spoon fulls)
   
6. Get up and get a crab toy for her to play with (0 spoon fulls)
   
7. Get up and get a ball toy for her to play with (1 spoon fulls)
8. Get up and get her a hammer toy to play with (3 spoon fulls)
   
9. Try the house phone again (2 spoon fulls)
   
10. Make "ahhhhhhhhh" noises with my mouth wide open to get her to copy me (9 spoon fulls)
11. Get up and get the container of Veggie Puffs to play with (1 spoon fulls)
12. House phone (0 spoon fulls)
13. Hammer (0 spoon fulls)
14. "Ahhhhhh" noise (0 spoon fulls)

When she started to cry the last time I made the "ahhhhh" noise and threw the phone and the hammer to the floor, I decided she was done. We made it through 5 oz of food which was good enough. Sure we would love her to eat 6 oz at each meal, but it just wasn't happening. I'm not sure if we're teaching her bad habits by catering to her needs, but if we don't play the game, then she just sits there with her mouth wired shut. And while I'd love to teach her a lesson by not feeding her, that usually causes some concern when she wakes up in the middle of the night because she might be hungry.

Not sure what to do about this since we've already started down this path, but at least she's eating right? That's the main part. After all, I am a clown, and I am here to entertain her. Oh, and if you want some entertainment, check out my latest Sports IllustraDad column over at Dad-Blogs. This post we look at the sad, sad, sad story of Big Papi and the life of lies he led in Boston. Very sad. I'm heartbroken about it. Really.

Failed Night Out

With Abuela in town for only a few more nights, we planned on taking advantage by sneaking out for a dinner alone. No highchair, no stroller, no variety of toys to distract Kaylani, and no having to move silverware away from her until finally giving in and letting her play with them. We had planned on heading to our favorite restaurant, Sotto in downtown Princeton, to celebrate Mommy's birthday a day late. We even had a plan for our plan that involved putting Kaylani down by 8pm so we could eat sometime before 9pm and be back well before 11pm. We planned on enjoying our dinner without having to look at a monitor or listen to see if Kaylani was crying. What we didn't have was a plan for when everything went differently from our plan.

I got home from work around 6:30pm which was during Kaylani's dinner time. Word on the street was she was being a bit fussy today, so after struggling to get Kaylani to eat all 4oz of her dinner tonight, it was time for bed. By 7:15pm, Mommy was ready to nurse Kaylani, and by 8pm, Kaylani was passed out and ready to be put into her crib. So far, our plan was going perfectly. But that's as far as we got. After 15 minutes, Daddy went in to check on Kaylani for the 2nd time. With a little bit of gentle forehead stroking, Kaylani was practically asleep, but not asleep enough to get out of the room without her making a stink out of it. Literally. Kaylani got so upset that she pooped.

Poop is the one thing that gets Daddy to give in and pick her up after she's been put down for the night. So after changing her and some gentle swaying, back into the crib she went. The crying commenced immediately, and after another 30 minutes and 2 trips in, things were looking grim for our hopes at dinner. At 9pm, Daddy went in for the 5th time tonight and tried to calm her down so she would fall asleep. And just like the other 4 times, she would quiet down, close her eyes, and try and get comfortable as long as Daddy had a hand on her. But once the hand disappeared, the crying came back.

At 9:15pm, Mommy and Daddy pulled the plug on our night out. Besides the fact that Kaylani still wasn't asleep, it was also too late for us to go out because we're old and lame. Instead, we headed down to the kitchen to heat up some leftovers and settle in for our nice dinner "alone" in the kitchen while staring at the monitor and listening to Kaylani cry, just like every other night. And wouldn't you know it, as soon as we sat down to take our first bite of food, Kaylani fell asleep. Just like we planned.

I'm convinced Kaylani knew we were trying to go out. As calming and reassuring to her as I tried to be to get her to sleep, apparently she saw right through me. She cried for 1.5 hours, and kept staring at the door and the monitor to make sure we knew she was looking for us. She calmed down only when I was there, and cried all the way until we sat down for our dinner. She knew. She had to. Why else would she have been crying?

Anyways, we're planning on trying again tomorrow night. One thought is to put her in her crib by 7pm, but knowing our luck, she'll pass out right away and wake up at 4am like she did 2 days ago. Hopefully tomorrow night will go better. If not, tomorrow will just be failed night out #2.

Part Baby, Part Monkey

I've always wanted a pet monkey. I thought it would be so cool to have a little monkey who could sit on my shoulder and walk around with me. Maybe someone who could teach me how to climb a tree, or just hang around. Funny enough, Mommy always wanted a monkey too. Her godmother was even going to get her one, but she got a puppy instead. Sadly, we never did get that pet monkey, but today, Kaylani played the role of monkey just for a little bit.

Before Daddy got home, there was a bit of monkey business going on in the house. Kaylani didn't really feel like taking her afternoon nap or being left alone, so Mommy started to go a bit bananas by the end of the day. It was hard to be upset with her for not napping since she slept for 11 hours last night, and then took a 2 hour nap this morning, but still, fussy baby and no nap makes for a bananas Mommy.

The real monkey part actually came at dinner time when we gave Kaylani real banana. She hasn't seemed to like baby bananas in a jar much, but we got the tip to try real banana mashed up real good to get rid of the acidy flavor. After letting Kaylani try and peel and eat a whole banana (and fail at it), Mommy mashed up a banana real good for dinner and Kaylani ate it all up. She ate an entire mashed banana without even flinching. Well, maybe pooping, but not flinching at the food. I'm pretty sure she would have eaten another one if we let her too but we're going to wait and see how she reacts to her first banana.

It probably doesn't sound that exciting that she ate a whole banana instead of half a jar of baby banana, but it's the first "homemade" food that she's had from us. Maybe now we'll move towards making our own food like a couple of our friends. Or maybe we'll just keep giving her mashed banana since its ridiculously easy to make and doesn't even require a blender. Like everything else that we do for Kaylani, we'll just stick with what's working for now. I'm sure our little monkey will let us know when she's ready for something else anyways.

Dinner Out

Tonight Mommy, Daddy, and Kaylani all experienced a first for dinner. For Mommy and Daddy, we had our first taste of Five Guys Burgers and Fries. But besides our dinner being delicious (I would compare it to an East Coast version of In-N-Out burger, but not quite as good), the new first for Kaylani was that she got to have dinner out with us! Before heading out, Mommy packed up Kaylani's oatmeal (yes, she's back to oatmeal instead of barley), put some milk in a cooler, and we were ready for our first dinner out.

With Kaylani strapped into her carseat and on top of her stroller (we've found out that upside down highseats don't work with our Graco carseat), she ate her dinner just like every other night. Apparently dinner out wasn't nearly as exciting for Kaylani as it was for us since she ate her 1/4 cup of oatmeal within 5 minutes just as usual. Lucky for Mommy, Daddy finished his burger in 5 minutes just as usual too so he could finish feeding Kaylani and let Mommy eat. Who knew that eating fast would come in handy some day?

After dinner, we went to Rita's for some custard/frozen ice with Dorothy, Tom, and Makayla before heading home. We were a bit past Kaylani's bedtime which meant she was out like a ton of bricks after nursing. We missed her bedtime by a little bit but it was totally worth it for the burger from Five Guys. Well, it'll be totally worth it if she sleeps for 11 hours tonight like she has this whole week. If not, well, it'll still be worth it. After all, a burger is a burger.