Carrots

Homemade Carrots

Ingredients:

Carrots (I used Parisian carrots because I liked the size of them. so I figured, why not? Any carrots will work.)

Water

How to Make:

1) I boiled these carrots until they were fork tender. 

2) Just like I did with the green beans, I first added some water to the Vitamix and then added the carrots. 

3) Turn Vitamix on Variable. Start at 1 and quickly turn up to 10. Let blend about 1-2 minutes until the carrots are pureed.

Green Beans

Homemade Green Beans

Ingredients: 

Green Beans

Water

*I don't really measure things out. I just dumped in some beans and used about 3/4 cup of water. I probably could have used a bit less, but they still came out great!

**If you're not using fresh fruits or veggies, it is better to use frozen than canned. Frozen fruits and veggies hold more of their nutrients than their canned counterparts. 

To make: 

1. Steam the green beans until they are no longer crunchy.

2. For green beans I use my amazing Vitamix. Pour water into the Vitamix and then add beans. Turn on (variable setting) and quickly work up to 10 (the highest setting). Just let it blend for a few minutes and voila! Green beans for dinner!

Pears

Homemade Pears

Ingredients:

Organic Pear

1. Peel pear, remove core and seeds, and chop up.

2. Using my [favorite] immersion blender again,  just mash up the pear. When pears are ripe they will mush up easily. 

That's it! Pears are really simple and another favorite of Baby J!

Mangoes

Homemade mango for breakfast

In my Clean Eating post I said that I would start putting recipes and pictures for all of Baby J's food. This morning she had mango for breakfast and this is super easy to make! 

Ingredients:

1 ripe mango

To make:

1. Peel the mango and chop it up 

    **I find mangoes to be a pain to chop because of their weird pit. So it may not look pretty, but as long as you just cut the fleshy part it's fine.

2. I use my cuisinart immersion blender for SO many things - seriously it's one of my favorite kitchen gadgets - and find that it's perfect for soft fruits like mangoes and pears. Blend until smooth.

And that's it! Baby J LOVES mango so we go through quite a bit of it. I haven't tried freezing any of her food but you probably could. Pinterest suggests freezing portions in ice cube trays. It's definitely worth trying!

Becoming a stay-at-home mom: Expectations vs. Reality

I poo pooed moms who whined about how hard it is to be a stay-at-home mom. I mean, how freaking hard is it to stay home and snuggle with a sleeping cherub all day every day? Being a stay-at-home mom was my dream job. I imagined my days as follows:

Wake up, feed baby, cook a delicious and healthy breakfast for me and my husband and then give him a kiss as I hand him his homemade lunch and send him off to work. The afternoon consists of walks in the park, playing and lots of cuddling. Then around 5pm the baby will be playing or sleeping happily while I get dinner ready and on the table just as hubs walks in the door after a long day at the office. Then we put the baby down together and relax with our wine and some tv before heading to bed for a good night's rest. I would be the BEST stay-at-home mom/wife EVER!

That all lasted about three weeks.

Being a stay-at-home mom is hard. Especially when you are taking care of a floppy, demanding little person whose lack of patience rivals your own. Seriously - this kid makes me look like a saint. When she wants something you had better hustle because it's only a matter of time before the volcano erupts.

Baby J is now five months old and every time I think I've got a good routine going, she switches it up on me.

So our days now look something like this:
Wake up, feed baby, scrounge up some breakfast for myself (hubs is a big boy - he can fend for himself), and sneak in a kiss goodbye while we both hope that there's no spit up or baby food getting in the middle of our oh-so-romantic peck that we hope lands on the other's lips and not the cheek or chin. Hopefully Baby is still happily playing on her mat. If so, it becomes a mad dash to get as much done as I can before her good mood expires and it's time to get her down for her morning nap. This morning nap lasts, if I'm lucky, about two full hours. Just enough time to shower, get dressed and put on just enough makeup so that I look like an actual functioning member of society as opposed to some prehistoric cave dweller.

When she wakes up, our afternoons consist mainly of errands and playtime. On Tuesdays we go to Mommy and Me where I get to interact with other adults, and on Fridays we hit up story time at the library. If I have a healthy meal ready - even almost ready - by the time my husband gets home, it was an extraordinarily productive day. While he eats, I bathe Baby J, get her into her jammies, hand her off to Daddy for a bedtime story and then nurse her to sleep before cleaning up from dinner. By the time all is said and done, somehow it's 9:00. And I'm beat. By 9:30 my husband and I are both in bed. By 10:00, we're out cold.

Is it easy? No. Glamorous? Absolutely not. Would I rather put Baby J in daycare and go back to work as a teacher? Nope. Because despite the fact that my days are a whirlwind of....stuff, and my tiny little boss doesn't always allow lunch breaks, I wouldn't trade being home with my daughter for the world. Watching her change, grow, develop and discover is truly worth it.

Clean Eating

What is wrong with this picture?

I know that the "in" thing right now is baby led weaning. Everyone is doing it, right? Letting baby decide when she's ready for solids and skipping cereal altogether. It sounds like a great idea, but not for us. 

For starters, Baby J decided that after months of sleeping through the night, she was going to regress. We were up 2-3 times a night. She would nurse and be back in bed within 15 minutes. I, on the other hand, was not so lucky. Once I'm up, I'm up. So I figured that maybe she just wasn't satisfied from breast milk alone. 

I bought Gerber's organic brown rice cereal, mixed it with breast milk, and started her on it at four months. It was an experience for sure. She LOVED her cereal and I loved having that experience with her. 

Then I read the ingredients and WOW! There are a lot of them! It was then that I decided I would make all of Baby J's food. I mean, I'm not going to work every day so I have no reason NOT to make sure she eats as healthily as she can. 

I'm not going to lie - making baby food isn't always convenient. It's much easier to just grab a few jars or pouches of organic baby food from Whole Foods, but it's worth it [to me] to know exactly what is going into her little tummy. 

Check out the picture above. It's Gerber's organic bananas. Look at ALL OF THOSE ingredients! Tuna oil!?!?! I find that to be pretty gross. Then there's gelatin and a few other things that I cannot identify. Convenient? Absolutely. Healthy? I think it's like formula. I just cannot understand how feeding a baby artificial stuff is healthy. 

Yeah, I get that millions of people feed their babies formula and prepackaged baby food. But millions of people also eat McDonald's, White Castle and the like. 

So it has been some trial and error when making Baby J's food. I have to remember to take pictures of the process and then upload them here. 

So far we have made                                 Ingredients                  

Bananas                                                       Bananas

Mangoes                                                      Mangoes

Green beans                                                Green beans, water

Peas                                                             Peas

Sweet potatoes                                            Sweet potatoes, breast milk

Also, think about the shelf life of store-bought baby food. That can stay on the shelf for months. Hell, some of it is probably older than Baby J!!! Gross!!!

I really love knowing exactly what is in the food she is eating. I also use organic fruits and vegetables - so I still can't understand why there are so many ingredients in Gerber's organic bananas. It's just crazy!

The Calm After the Storm

I had every intention of getting this blog off the ground...and then life happened.

I wanted more than anything to be a stay-at-home mom, but living in New York would have made that almost impossible. Why? Well, imagine this: 

• Owning and living in a 1,700 sq. ft. condo (you do not own any of the property that is "your yard". 
• Paying $360 a month (plus an additional $140 a month during June, July and August) in maintenance fees (and special assessment fees) which basically covered lawn care, snow removal, and the concrete hole in the ground otherwise known as the pool. 
• Paying almost $8,000 a year in property taxes. Again, the only thing you own is the inside of your tiny condo. 
• Childcare was going to run about $2,000 a month. We checked out daycare facilities and a private nanny - the cost was going to be about the same.  
• Extras like Mommy & Me? These could run you an additional $200+ a month. IF you could find a place that tailored its hours around working moms. 

So, would it have been possible to stay home and live in New York? Probably. I certainly wouldn't have been the first to make it work. Would it have been ideal? Absolutely not. It would have been extraordinarily difficult. But, we were prepared to make it work one way or another. Then God stepped in. 

After years of hardships, God finally decided that it was time to make our new life a little easier. My husband, the amazing man and father that he has grown to be, was willing to make his work life even crazier than it already was by going to work in Manhattan. The hours would be longer, the commute would be torturous, but the money would be better and I could stay home with our daughter. In May, he had started interviewing and was seemingly about to be handed a position when this other opportunity landed in his lap. This new opportunity was for a position that he hoped to attain in the next 5-10 years of his career. 

Not only would this job put my husband exactly where he wanted to be professionally, but it would also relocate our family to Florida - a place with a much lower cost of living, real suburban communities, and, best of all, no more harsh winters - and allow us to live much more comfortably on one salary than if we were to stay in New York. 

At first, the answer seemed easy - let's go! We were excited and optimistic about the idea of moving. My husband submitted his resume and waited to hear back. And waited....and waited....and waited. 

I had practically forgotten about the job, and my husband hadn't actually expected to get it (according to him, he was too young and lacked the experience that was necessary). So you can imagine our surprise when he got a phone call in June from the head of the company asking him to fly down to Florida the following week for an interview. The rest happened with lightening speed.

I won't bore you with all of the details, but long story short we are now living down in sunny Florida! Moving from New York to Florida with an infant actually wasn't as bad as it may seem, and despite a little touch of homesickness, we have been transitioning pretty well. 

Truth be told, Florida is not AS cheap as I thought it would be, but we are definitely better off than we would have been up in New York. If we were in New York, I would be at work right now instead of writing this blog and our daughter would be somewhere doing God knows what. Her dad would probably be leaving for work before she woke up in the morning and getting home after she was already in bed asleep. 

I've only been here about a month and a half, so it still gets a bit lonely at times. But this new life is good, and I have faith that everything will fall into place just as it should.