Anniversary Vacation!!!

January 13 marked our five year wedding anniversary. We made a pact when we got married that each year on our anniversary we would go someplace warmer than where we currently were. For the most part we stuck to it. Last year was the exception since we had a 5 month old baby at home.
This year though, we made big plans! In the past we have visited our friends in Tampa and visited one of the major FL theme parks while we were there. 2007 we went to Magic Kingdom, 2008 we visited Sea World, 2009 I was in Texas for school, 2010 we skipped and this year we visited Universal Islands of Adventure...specifically to see the Harry Potter exhibit!
Instead of the usual extended weekend trip we decided to stay a whole week and take Dill with us! Traveling with a toddler was an adventure to say the least!
We had planed to stay in FL from Jan 20-26, but mother nature had a better idea. She dumped snow and ice on Baltimore and 'stranded' us in FL for an extra 2 days!! It was *just* awful... yeah, even I can't say that with a straight face. Considering we were staying with friends and not in a hotel, it wasn't any added expense for us. We did have a rental vehicle, but the extra time was next to nothing.
We had an amazing trip. Harry Potter was the best exhibit at a park I have ever seen. The attention to detail was incredible. Is. of Adv also has a Dr. Seuss area for kids that Dillan just couldn't get enough of.
He went on his first ride, The Cat in the Hat, and really enjoyed it. He also rode the Caroseussel. He was too small to do much else, but was mesmerized by all the sights and sounds of the rest of the park.

Flying can be a daunting task in itself, but adding a toddler to the mix creates a whole other world of things that can go wrong. Luckily there are some amazingly helpful women on the Traveling with Children board on Babycenter. After taking note of all the advice we decided to travel as light as we possible could. Unfortunately this still meant taking the car seat (we bought D a seat for safety and we'd need it in the car in FL), the lightwt stroller, 2 medium suitcases for Mike and I (putting everything in one would have put it over the wt limit for Southwest), a small suitcase for Dill, the diaper (book)bag, small carry on for me, Mike's carry on, portable/ fold up booster seat (we could have done without this, but it was nice to have), and a small soft cooler with juice and snacks for Dill. It wasn't too difficult to get through the airport once we checked the 3 bags. We had the car seat strapped to the stroller, the cooler on the handles, the feeding chair (which was Mike's "personal item") in the basket, and our carry-on in the car seat. Mike wore the diaper bag and I wore Dill in our Ergo. I have to say that when traveling with kids, a carrier is a MUST!!! Made things in the airport, at the park, and just about everywhere we went soooo much easier!!
We rented a mini-van at the airport since we would have 4 adults and 2 kids in car seats with us most of the trip. Enterprise gave us a Dodge Grand Caravan which was nice, but reconfirmed that I will NEVER own a minivan. The sliding doors were handy and it had lots of storage, but that's about it. Everything else about it was a pain in the butt!

To be continued...

Holiday Wrap-up

It's February?? When did that happen????
I'm really starting to hate this whole "getting older" thing. Time seems to move much faster than it did when I was in my teens and twenties. Christmas is a distant memory already, even though the temperatures have forced the outside decorations to stay up at our house. 2010 came and went.
Let me recap:

• Thanksgiving- Pretty calm this year. Mike and I cooked at home and had a nice quiet meal together. I was excited about Dillan being able to really enjoy his first Thanksgiving meal but he wanted nothing to do with it. After dinner we visited with my aunt and her family for a little while. They hadn't seen Dillan since before he turned 1 so it was fun for them to see him running around and interacting.

• Christmas- I have been much better about starting the decorating process early. This year I had the house decorated by the first week of Dec. With D being a very active toddler, climbing everything, we vetoed the use of our giant artificial tree in favor of a smaller (easily contained) real tree. I was very excited since I hadn't had a real tree in at least 6 years. We found the perfect little tree at Home Depot. Ornaments presented a challenge as most of the ones we own are either heirlooms or are very breakable. Nothing a quick $20 trip to Walmart couldn't fix! I bought an assortment of non-glass, shatterproof, ornaments for our tree. After setting up the tree we had to finagle some Super Yard panels to keep Dillan from undercoating it. In the end it worked out great. We had a cute little toddler-friendly tree just the right size for the space we had available.
  The holiday season not only means shopping and decorating, but also the realization that there is too much to do and too little time. We vowed that this year we would not do all the running around on Christmas day and we would really enjoy the day with Dillan. The only concrete plans we had were to see my father on the Christmas Eve, as has been tradition every year since before Mike and I started dating. We also accepted an invitation to dinner at my aunts house. She hadn't had a big family dinner in a few years but this year her kids were really insistent on hosting one. Plans to see Mike's family were, as usual, up in the air. It was decided the week of Christmas that his family would be gathering on Christmas Eve because of his brother's custody arrangement. This inadvertently excluded us from the family Christmas altogether. Though he'll never tell his parents (men, sheesh) my husband was hurt by this. I think he feels left out a lot and I know that sometimes he feels that he is overlooked because there's always some other drama going on.
  We visited with my dad on Christmas Eve as planned and I'm sooooooo glad we did! Dillan really shined! He wasn't the shy, clingy kid he usually is in crowds. He was running around and had a blast operating my dad's train set. Even though he was the only kid under 20, he didn't care. He was such a ham!! For the first time in his life he let my dad hold him and interact with him. I almost cried when I saw them playing together. I know it meant a lot to my dad too.
  Then my dad surprised Dillan with his very own train set (thank goodness he wasn't scared by them like last year!) for under our tree.
  When we got home from dad's I got Dillan some dinner and ready for bed while Mike visited a friend's annual Christmas eve gathering. While he was gone I prepared the present I wasn't supposed to buy him! We agreed no gifts since we were going to FL for a week in Jan to celebrate our anniversary. I couldn't resist though when I saw the VERY specific watch he's been wanting for 10 years on sale...cheap! I wrapped it in Dillan's toy mailbox as a "special delivery" from Dillan and Santa. .I thought I'd be proactive and start assembling and wrapping all of Dillan's toys. I had the idea to wrap them in tissue paper so he could easily rip it off. I learned it's very difficult to wrap large angular toys with tissue paper! I also forgot to get batteries. Doh! No worries though, Mike grabbed them on his way home. We got everything wrapped and set the train up under the tree and made it to bed just before 3am!
  
   

 

• Christmas morning was fun. Dillan wasn't too into opening his gifts but he did love the puzzles and toy kitchen. Mike was really surprised by the watch and a little fake mad that I got him something when I said I wouldn't.
  We had dinner at my Aunts and again Dillan was an angel! He was having a ball playing with my Aunt and cousin and it was really nice to be able to sit with the grown ups and talk. After dessert we packed up and headed home. We took the long way around the beltway to stop at Mike's parents house. We had hoped to catch his brother and their twins, but like Dillan, they were ready for bed. D was pretty maxed out and wouldn't eat. He just wanted to cuddle and cry. We did a quick Christmas with them and finally made it home. Everyone was sound asleep in no time.

• New Year's- We visited Mike's twin nephews on NYE. D had a lot of fun playing "with" his cousins. More accurately he had fun playing with their toys lol. He loved the play house w/ slide and almost immediately gravitated towards their kitchen. After dinner we got all the kids together to color a card for the grandparents. We spent most of the afternoon into the evening hanging out before going home to watch the ball drop.

Between Nov and Jan we also went to 2  friend's 1st bdays. I don't have the energy to write about those!

Com-mun-i-cate

Verb- to express thoughts, feelings, or information easily or effectively.
Sounds simple enough right? Not when your 1 and the language you speak seems to be completely misunderstood by everyone around you. Luckily toddlers learn to use 'our' language so we know what the heck they're trying to tell us.
Dillan has been learning more words; he knows mama, dada, up, down, Dora, dog, ball, cat, apple, tickle, and can make the sound of a cow, sheep and pig...though thanks to Sandra Boynton his pigs only say "la la la".
He also says more, milk, please, "go go go", NO, bye bye, yum, and map.

Happy Fall

This is my favorite time of the year. It's fall. The leaves are changing, the weather is starting to stay cold, and the holidays are right around the corner.
Halloween is one of my favorite holidays and the fact that it's the first holiday in fall makes it even more fun.
This year we didn't go out to the bars or give out candy like we usually do. We had a nice quiet weekend filled with friends and fun instead. I couldn't have been happier about it!

We started the fall season with a trip to Baugher's orchard to visit the pumpkin patch. They have a good sized free petting zoo and Dillan really seemed to like the sheep following us around. They also have a cool wooden train that he couldn't get enough of.
He was moderatley unimpressed by the pumpkin patch, though he did like banging on the pumpkins.
Not surprisingly he loves apple cider, so of course we bought a gal since it's super fresh.

The following weekend was Halloween. Our first event was my bff's daughter's 1st birthday party. He house was packed and D was a little frustrated that he couldn't freely run and play. We stayed late into the night and he was able to play with Sammy and her friend Brandon after all the adults left. Now that he's walking he really enjoys his freedom.
Halloween was on a Sunday and we decided to go to ZooBoo as a family (daddy had to work the night of Sammy's party). I made most of our costumes this year and we went as Magenta, Blue, and Joe from Blue's Clues. Our friends S&B had free zoo passes and while there we met up with Aunt Laura, Uncle Drew, and cousins C&E. Dillan didn't mind being in costume all day and even passed out in the stroller from all the fun!
Birthday girl!

Lockdown

That's what I was in last week.
Thursday 9/16 I was in a meeting when I received the following text @ 11:18am "Shooter incident on Nelson 8. Stay in your office or room and lock the doors until the all clear is announced. Stay away from windows. Wait for instructions."
I was with a friend/coworker and we weren't sure what was happening. We ended the meeting and joined some of the other staff in the corridor. We were on lock down.
For the next 3 hours we were essentially locked in our office suite waiting for accurate updated information. We all had the news channels on our computers and were seeing the stream of confusing and often inaccurate information that was being reported.
This is what happened. A patent's son was upset at the news he received in relation to his mother's condition. He shot the physician and returned to her room where he eventually shot and killed her before killing himself.
No one knew that he was contained to the pts room until after the incident was over. We were thinking he was loose in the hospital a la last springs Grey's Anatomy finale. Our office is in the dome building of Johns Hopkins. It's the oldest building on campus and one of the most used entrances. The back of our building faces the Nelson building. There was concern about the windows because we didn't know what side of the Nelson building this guy was on (turns out is was the other side, facing Wolfe St.).
Once we got a message that the situation was contained to N8 we were free to move about the hospital once more. Lunch was my priority at that point since it was after 2pm.
The whole thing was surreal, especially because we could hear the helicopters overhead and saw the footage on the news.
I was able to be online and let me friends/ family know that we were safe. It's amazing all the stories that people were hearing and how wrong the news was at times. My friends were thankful that I could let them know things were ok.
Just another one of those great stories I'll get to tell my grand kids one day.

The end is just the beginning

Summer's over. Autumn doesn't technically begin until next Wed, 9/22, at 11:09pm ET, but metaphorically it's over. The state fair has come and gone (we never did make it, very disappointing for me) and the weather is getting cooler. More importantly, the end of summer means it's vacation time for our family!
We have discovered the many joys of vacationing later in the season. Our favorite week of vacation begins Labor Day weekend. There are no crowds, no traffic, and prices are substantially lower. Merchants are still operating on full schedules and many offer hefty discounts to late season visitors.
Our vacation this year was a return trip to an old favorite, the Outer Banks of NC. This year we rented a house near the beach in Kill Devil Hills. The entire trip including a whole house for a week, food, entertainment, and gas was less than $1200 for the 3 of us. We had an awesome time.
I really thought that we were going to be limited in what we did because Dilly is so young and isn't walking on his own yet. I was pleasantly surprised at how wrong my assumptions were! We did everything we normally would have done, and more! I was worried about schedules and planning, but once I realized that it's vacation and time to relax everything fell into place. We got up when we wanted, ate and napped when we needed to, and went where ever the wind took us. It was the best vacation we've had in a long time.
The drive down was uneventful until about 20 min from our destination. Mike, who was sitting behind the passenger seat to keep D company, yells at me to pull the car over quickly. In a panic I pull off the road into the grass and start to frantically look around for whats wrong, thinking it's D. Turns out he saw smoke coming from behind my steering wheel and wasn't sure what it was. (back story- I'd been smelling a waxy burning smell for some time and had my vehicle in for service twice before our trip. I had been assured that it was all related to a recall, which was performed)
After sitting for a min and not seeing any of the smoke myself, I did see an office pull up behind me. He let me know that the place I stopped wasn't a good place due to the speed of traffic and the curve of the road. He escorted us over the bridge and made sure things were ok before heading off.
Mike and I were convinced that the issue was something electronic and related to the accessories in the dash. After all, I had my GPS plugged in, the XM radio on and the A/C on the entire trip. That's a lot of pull on the electrical system and all of it has connection points in the dash. Throughout the duration of our trip we systematically tested our theory and found no definitive source of the problem.
Anyhoo, back to the trip...we arrived at our place pretty late on Sat. We unpacked the car, ordered food, set up Dillan's room some and went to bed. As we expected, D didn't sleep well since he slept most of the way down. Mike ended up laying in the kids room  on the bed with him until they both fell asleep.
Sunday we decided to have an easy day and went to the outlets. I didn't pack any shorts (probably because I don't have any that I particularly like the fit of) so I was looking for some end of season deals. We stopped at Sonic for some lunch and Dillan got his first taste of our favorite fast food. He enjoyed his grilled cheese and tots with (very watered down) fruit punch. We had fun shopping all afternoon and in the evening took Dillan to the beach for the first time. His reaction to the sand was mixed. He liked to play with it in his hands and shovel it into his bucket, but he didn't want his feet in it.
Monday we decided to drive a few miles south to the Bodie Island lighthouse. We have been to the Currituck Lighthouse in Corolla, but never the Bodie Is. one. It was surprisingly close to Nags Head. When we got there the lighthouse was encased in a very intricate scaffolding while it was being reconstructed. Visitors have never been able to climb the lighthouse, not that we would have with D; the old keeper's cottage is open as a small museum though. For dinner we went to a local favorite, Dare Devil Pizza's. Dillan was unimpressed with the actual pizza, but very much enjoyed the crust.
Tuesday we visited Jockey's Ridge State Park where we walked one of the nature trails with Dillan comfortably riding in the BH OS. One cannot visit the 'dunes' without stopping at Kitty Hawk Sports to check out all the cool kites. They have a wide selection of eclectic toys, souvenirs, and fun outdoorsy things. They also have a nice selection of OBX stickers, and the one on my truck needed replacing! The day concluded for us with an evening walk on the beach where we showed D the fiddler crabs and starfish that we found along the shoreline.
Wednesday was predicted to be the warmest day of the week so we ventured up to TimBuckII in Corolla to do some shopping. Dillan had fun on the swing set in the playground. Mike and I bought some of our favorite treats at Try My Nuts...Butta Nuts and Dirty White Trash! After stopping in Duck to ogle the really big, uber expensive houses we went back to the house for a nap. We walked to the beach that night for some glow stick fun which D really seemed to enjoy.
Thursday was our only actual beach day. We got there early and after struggling with the sun cabana we borrowed had a pretty great setup! We had food, shade, and a baby pool for D to splash around in. Apparently nothing tastes better to a toddler than a Pb&J dipped in salt water. After a very long nap we had dinner then headed out for a round of mini golfing. D was delighted that he got to help by retrieving the ball from the hole each time. I think we have a future pro on our hands, lol.
Friday we ventured over to Roanoke Island; it's between Nags Head and the mainland. There's a nice aquarium there that we visited and a cute waterfront town to explore. We had lunch at the cutest cafe then did some shopping in old town Manteo. For dinner we had all intentions of going to a nice seafood buffet for the 'early bird' deals but we all over slept and they were closed by the time we made it out the door. We did find a nice, and very highly recommended, seafood restrauant. The Jolly Rodger was like walking abord a pirate ship all decorated for xmas! The entire ceiling was COVERED in xmas ornaments!!!! Needless to say, it kept D distracted enough that we were able to enjoy dinner. The food was good, but I'm glad it was inexpensive because it wasn't anything we couldn't have gotten at home.
The trip home Sat was ok. We stopped at the Grave Digger, our redneck vacation tradition. When D gets older he'll probably be more excited about it. Also on the way home we stopped to visit Uncle Drew, Aunt Laura and the wonder twins. D reached him limit of being in the carseat so we stopped by for a visit. The boys were heading to bed so we changed D and gave him some dinner. He then enjoyed playing with his cousins toys and hamming it up for his aunt and uncle.
All in all it was a great vacation.

*I did get my car checkout out. I dropped it off Sunday night after pretty much demanding they look at it on Monday. They found that the controls and wiring for the headlamp stalk (which controls the running lights, tail & break lights, turn signals, and high beams) was faulty and slightly melted. It was replaced, at no cost to me, under my extended warranty.

I'll post pictures later.

Happy Birthday!

Sunday August 1st was a bittersweet day. It was Dillan's first birthday. It's so sureal that he is one already, no longer a baby but not technically a toddler as he doesn't yet 'toddle'. We celebrated with family and friends at a local park. We rented a pavillion and cooked on the grill. My intent was easy, casual and fun. Honestly, I don't remember much of the day as I was runing around trying to get everything done and keep D happy all at the same time. Looking back, it felt much like my wedding reception. I wish had been able to sit and talk to more people and really relax and enjoy the day.
All in all though, it was a great day. The weather was perfect, mid-80's and none of the rain they had given us a 40% of.
I would like to thank all of our family and friends for coming and spending the day with our family. It really does mean a lot that so many people care about and love our little boy. Many of our family members hadn't yet met him and it was nice to indtroduce him to everyone.
In the days leading up to the party there was a bit of family drama, a rare occurance I have to say. In the end though only one person decided that Dillan was not important enough to take the high road for. It saddens me because my husband now knows he really can't count on someone he should be able to and after many late night talks, he's over it. And here I thought MY family would have caused the problems! Lol.

On a better note, I decided to scrap my idea for making cupcakes due to time constraints and bought a 1/2 sheet cake from Safeway. It was half white cake and half chocolate. I didn't have them decorate it as I had already planned to make Moose & Zee characters (from Nick Jr) for the cake. I have never worked with fondant and was surprized as to how easy and fun it was. My mom made D's "smash cake" which I decorated simply with orange and blue gel icing and a big "D". He wasn't impressed with his cake. He sort of poked at it and dragged his finger through the icing. For the first time ever, he didn't want to put it in his mouth! Figures!! Mike cut a piece and after a few small tastes, he got the idea that it was ok to eat. He ended up making quite a mess!
The other cake (for our guests) was delicious!

Thanks again to everyone who came and made this day so special for my family!!! <3

Slacker

I know, I sort of suck at this whole blogging often thing. Life kinda gets in the way when you have an 11 month old. Yes...Dillan is 11 months already! How did that happen so fast??? This time last year I was 38 weeks pregnant! I had demolished, tiled, and repainted the bathroom (finishing just 3 days before going into labor btw!). Now I am planning his first birthday party!!! We're planning a gathering with the family and a few close friends at Double Rock park. I have been working on designing the invitations and coming up with ideas for his 'smash' cake.
Speaking of work...we've been uber busy and I am really looking forward to our vacation in Sept. I just wish I knew where we were going. We're either going to Tampa to visit friends or renting a house in the OBX. It all depends on Southwest and their ticket prices. Since we'll have to rent a car when we get there we'll need to take the carseat. We might as well get D a seat and take it on the plane so we don't have to worry about damage by checking it. The whole thought of traveling with D is exciting and stressful all at the same time. I don't want to take too much but I am a habitual over-packer. *sigh* I think we're going to end up with a house in Nags Head because it'll be cheaper than the flight + rental car.
In other news, we've started a garden! Mike really spearheaded this idea. There's a neighborhood garden around the corner but we've never been able to get reliable information about it. He bought seeds and a starter greenhouse kit and planted green pepper and tomato. We decided to cultivate the 2 raised beds by the pool and a section of the unkempt area by the fence. Our idea sort of took on a life of its own and now we have hanging tomato and strawberries; in the raised beds we have red/ orange/ yellow peppers, carrots, sweet potatoes, green peppers; in flower boxes we have oregano and tons of basil; and in the side garden we have watermelon, squash, and cucumber. We've gotten 2 small but tasty strawberries and we have one red pepper growing nicely. We got a late start so I'll be happy if we get at least one of each variety.

Dilly update

This is going to be short because I don't feel like typing today.
Dillan has changed so much in the 8 short months he's been on this planet.
As of 3.26.10 he:

• Babbles non-stop! He 'says' dadadadadadadadadadadada, baaaaa ba, mmmmmmmm (no ma yet, but hopefully soon)
• blows raspberries, his favorite time to do this is with a mouth full of food or milk!
• sleeps from about 10pm-8am with little to no waking (he's been doing this for awhile now)
• holds his own bottle
• eats 2-3 solid foods a day (see previous post if you're interested in what he now eats)
• rolls both directions
• sits up all on his own
• scoots backwards on his tummy
• stands when you hold his hands
• stands while leaning on something (can only do this for about a min)
• reaches for EVERYTHING!
• passes toys from hand to hand
• uses the 'pincher grasp' to get small items, such as yogurt drops or cheerios
• claps his hands together
• plays peek-a-boo with a blanket, his new fav game!
• "shares" his teethers with me

No teeth have appeared yet, but we have been able to see a small white line on his gum for about 2 weeks. We're hoping anyday now it will work its way through.

That's it for now.

Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum...

Dilly is eating just about everything…YUM!

We started Dil on solid foods at the end of Jan, just before he turned 5 months. We decided to skip rice cereal as it has no taste, no texture, and can be constipating. I made the decision to make all his food from scratch so that I could control the quality of ingredients and the texture of the purees.

I did a little research online as to what was needed to make your own baby food and found that it is surprisingly easy to do! Many people have a steamer basket, a blender and a food processor. This seemed like a lot of clean up and get out every time you wanted to make something. I like things simple. I heard great reviews about the Beaba Babycook. It’s an all in one steamer, processor, and defroster in one. Plus, its dishwasher safe and BPA free. My mom and I went to Towson Town Center to check them out at the Williams Sonoma store. It’s a nice compact size but carries a hefty price tag, $149.99. I had seen it online for less, but was hesitant to buy before seeing it in person. To my surprise, my mom bought one on the spot! I was super excited!!!! We also went to Barnes and Nobles to get a few books on making baby food. I found Annabel Karmel’s books the easiest to follow and the most comprehensive. I picked up The Healthy Baby Meal Planner: Mom-Tested, Child-Approved Recipes for Your Baby and Toddler and First Meals: The Complete Cookbook and Nutrition Guide. Another good book is Top 100 Baby Purees.

The only other thing I needed was something to freeze the food in. I found the Fresh Baby Food Stroage Trays, a 2pack of ice cube trays with lids, on Diapers.com for $12.99. Each cube is 1oz of food. (the great thing about diapers.com is that they price match any other website, plus all orders over $49 have free overnight shipping!)

After I ran everything through the dishwasher I was ready to go.

I decided that pears were going to be Dillan’s first meal. They are easy to digest, not likely to have an allergic reaction to and have a sweet favor. They also help with constipation, which Dil had been having a bit of trouble with. I pealed the pears and cut them into cubes. After adding the correct amount of water to my Beaba (it has pre-marked lines on the bowl and you add a specific amount depending on the food), I put the pear cubes into the basket and placed it in the bowl. After clipping on the lid I turned the knob to “steam”. It automatically shuts off when it is done. So easy! I removed the basket and dumped the steamed pears into the bowl for pureeing. After putting the lid back on, I blended up the fruit to a mostly liquid consistency. Then I poured my puree into the trays, snapped on the lids, pop into the freezer and viola! Baby food!

I did figure out that it’s best if you put the trays in the fridge to cool before transferring to the freezer. And now that I am making so much food, I take the frozen cubes and put them into labeled freezer bags so I can quickly reuse the trays.

In all it took me about 20 min to make 2 trays of food. Each tray is equivalent to just about 3, 2 packs of Gerber 1st Foods (the plastic containers with 2 per pack). Each of the Gerber packs is about $1.25 in the store, but I made enough food to equal 6 of those packs for about $2 total…a $5.50 savings on just pears! Not only is it better for Dil, it’s saving us money!

We fed Dil the pears diluted with just a splash of formula (more for a familiar taste than anything else) and he gobbled it up!!! It’s like he knew just what to do with the food. He didn’t push it back out with his tongue and he even tried to take the spoon and feed himself! I was amazed. I thought it was going to be more difficult to teach him how this eating thing works.

Since I made the pears I have made a freezer full of foods for him. His first foods were pears, sweet potato, papaya, banana (just mush and serve), butternut squash, fresh green beans, frozen peas, and avocado. He has also had apple, carrots, and a mixed berry medley (premixed bag of flash frozen strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and blackberries). He’s like just about everything. He’s still iffy on the carrots and peas if he’s not in the mood for them. I have lost count of how much money I have saved by making his food. The one thing I refuse to make though is prunes! I hate the smell and would prefer to buy the organic Gerber ones for when he’s really constipated. I did recently buy a few jars of food that have meats in them: Turkey and Rice, Chicken and Apples, Vegetable Beef, and Mac and Cheese. I want to see how he likes meat flavors before venturing into making them myself. He had the Turkey and Rice last night and loved it. It smelled just like turkey and stuffing at Thanksgiving!

A great site for all things baby food is http://www.wholesomebabyfood.com/