Item
Pear

Category
Fruit

Brand (if applicable)
Hipp and homemade

Cooking & serving method
Using BEABA Babycook, slices of pear were steamed for 10 minutes then pureed. I served about 1 teaspoon of thick puree with about 2-4 tbsp of lukewarm water and 1 tsp of rice cereal.

Reaction
He didn’t go for the commercial pear – found it too sour and a lot of it kept dribbling out of his mouth (refusal to swallow). Even gave me the “eeeee” face and shivered too! It took me about two homemade batches to get to the right taste and consistency. Verdict? French pears are the way to go – they must be ripe and pureed without the peel.

Other notes
The sippy cup is becoming familiar and he seems to enjoy gnawing and sucking on it but the amount that he’s actually drinking is less – perhaps about 10-20ml. I think he just likes the sippy because he can spit out water and play with it. He seems to prefer breastmilk over water (no surprise there) and his wet diaper count is still very good; in fact, all his diapers are “wetter” than before.

Item
Rice cereal

Category
Grains

Brand (if applicable)
Organix

Cooking & serving method
1 tsp plus 4-5 tablespoons of water after milk feed at noon

Reaction
Semi-positive as the first two days, he found the texture and taste to be interesting, thus she finished everything. However, on the third and fourth day, he didn’t seem all that keen after the first couple of spoonfuls and didn’t finish the cereal.

Other notes
The sippy cup is becoming familiar and he seems to enjoy gnawing and sucking on it but the amount that he’s actually drinking is less – perhaps about 10-20ml. He seems to prefer breastmilk over water (no surprise there) and his wet diaper count is still very good; in fact, all his diapers are “wetter” than before.

…on solids, that is.

My Munchkin bowls and Lock n Lock containers arrived just in time for Noah’s grand entrance into the world of yummy food! LOL. He has been ready for solids for a while now but we decided to put it on hold until he was nearer to his 6mth (corrected age) as it lessens the chances of him developing allergies or gastro issues – the allergies are a cause for concern because of his eczema (you can see it on his face now *sob*).

I’m starting him on Organix rice cereal and then by end of the week, will move him to either organic apricots or prunes and organic peas. Making homemade purees got me all excited again and I dug out the BEABA for a good clean as well as to purchase some spare parts like the spatula and steaming basket. I might consider changing the entire steaming container but after examining, decide against it as it was still in good shape. One problem I foresee with the homemade purees would be the lack of seasonal fruits but summer is coming so it’ll be a good time for me to stock up on fresh local produce and use those in my purees instead.

I also plan to keep a paper food log just to track how he reacts to each food item. As usual, Super Baby Food coupled with the website wholesomebabyfood.com will be leading the weaning front so yay! The next chapter is here!

She never commented or asked about my diet during my pregnancy. She did, however, ask about family history of allergies and eczema. I guess that’s more of a contributing factor than what I ate. Her questions were focused mainly on Noah’s temperament, behaviour, sleeping & eating habits, environmental factors (“is it hot or cold when he scratches?” “does he sweat a lot?”) and other things like his poo, whether he drools, where does he appear to scratch or itch and so forth. She checked Noah’s skin and remarked that she doesn’t see any oozy patches (which is good), just a lot of crusting going on which means that the skin is healing and told us that the key is in catching the patch when it’s hot and inflamed (just before it starts to ooze). Once it oozes, no grease on the affected area as it will inhibited healing. Hm.

She then proceeded to devise a couple of treatments. We would then start the treatment according to what Noah likes. That meant we had to test out five different things with Noah and see how he responds – salt, sugar, lemon juice, vinegar and smoked salmon. Just a pinch of any one of these items each day. If he responds well, then we pick the treatment that corresponds with the right taste. We have three weeks to see if the treatment works. If it works, it will clear everything up. If it doesn’t work, we’ll be back to square one. Either way, we’ll have to give her a call to see what is the next step.

She also encouraged me to continue putting on creams. People with eczema must not go a day without creams or moisturisers. Dexeryl, she agreed, was not rich enough so it is important to find whatever works for Noah. We were told that even though a cream may work in the beginning, it may lose its potency so we have to be prepared to end up with a lot of creams that DON’T work or outlived its use. Any oils and butters are fine – just do a patch test and if he responds well, stick to it. If he starts to break out again, then find another moisturiser that works.

She pointed out that it’s good that I am stopping him from scratching because scratching makes things REALLY bad so at this stage, I’m prepared to invest in “tools”. Am thinking of ordering a scratch sleeve for him and then use that as a pattern based for bigger sizes.

For once, I felt good about the whole thing. As I left the office, I felt more strengthened to help Noah fight this battle. Prior to this visit, I was on the verge of giving up as I felt that I wasn’t going anywhere. This form of treatment is quite similar to TCM – Traditional Chinese Medicine – where herbs and other ingredients are used to treat the body or root cause and not just tackle the symptoms. Encouraged, I decided to place an order for 10ml samples of a variety of oils – I read – that will help with eczema such as argan, rosehip, evening primrose, burriti, borage and butters like mumuru and cupuacu.

I hope to find a few that works for him and with any luck, we’ll have his eczema under control.

I call it “Cry, Whine & Torture Mummy” Day. It’s bad when you have one kid who does nothing but cry, whine and well, does everything under the sun to annoy the heck out of you. But when you have two…

OH.MY.GAWD.

Eva got things off to a GREATTTTT start. Heh.

For breakfast, she got oats with milk and dried strawberries. It didn’t go down too well. When I asked her to finish her meal, she whine and cried. Drama queen at work. Then it was potty time. When I got her pajamas off, she whine and cried. Put her on the potty, she cried. Got her dressed, she cried. When we headed out, I asked her to hold my hand, she said no and grabbed my bag instead. Ended up flat on her face and well, my bag broke too. She cried. For 500 over metres, she cried and whine. I bought some bananas for her, she cried. I went to the post office and came out with two parcels which meant that I couldn’t hold her hand. You’d think that she’d be okay with that but no. She THREATENED to cry. All that drama for two hours non-stop.

For lunch, she poured water all over herself, dropped rice everywhere and just took her sweet time eating. As if that wasn’t bad enough, by the time she wound down for a nap, Noah decided to go berserk. He couldn’t sleep so that meant whining, crying and wanting to nurse to sleep. And just when he went about to doze off, Eva comes out of her room and decides not to nap. A harsh word got her back into her room but it woke Noah up so back to square one. For the entire afternoon, he whined NON-STOP and wanted to nurse to sleep. Then Eva decides that the ink on her reward chart was delicious and licked it clean. Noah was still whining and fussing. After four hours of whining and fussing, he finally dozed off…in the swing.

Me? Exhausted and drained. Bah.

I need a break.

Seriously.

Or at least soon to be one.

A few weeks back, we started testing if Noah was ready for solids as he could sit well supported and has pretty good neck support. The test is nothing unusual or special – just a spoon with some water as the first solids should be of a liquid consistency and similar to breast milk.

The first time we tried, it was funny. He didn’t know what to do with the spoon and just kept his mouth shut. Sure sign that he wasn’t ready.

A week or two later, we gave it another go. This time, he gummed the spoon but the water came dribbling out due to his thrust/gag reflex. So no go again.

Last week, I tried. He was more receptive and swallowed a bit of the water but I still wasn’t convinced that we ought to start him.

Yesterday, we tried and I must say that it was a good outcome. He opened his mouth for the spoon, tilted his body forward (sign of interest) and swallowed the water (with a funny face).

Still, I won’t be introducing solids to him until he hits at least 5.5 months old (adjusted age). That should give me some time to prepare whatever I need in terms of cereals, fruit and vegetable puree as well as utensils and equipment. Not to mention an adjustment to his schedule as well as Eva’s. It can be challenging trying to get two kids down for a meal!

I must admit that I am a little reluctant…this new chapter is also a sign that he’s growing up and ohmy, too fast, I feel.

Here is a series of pictures I took while we were busy working on this activity. It took about 15 minutes and I used kidney beans before moving onto rice to make things a little bit more challenging. She transferred the beans without any problems or spillage but the rice – ohno! One thing good about this activity is that it ties in with her love for cooking and she was so into it so much so that when asked if she wanted to watch a cartoon, she said NO! Hehehe.

I also got a glimpse of some skills which she picked up from me while she observed me as I cooked and baked – namely patting down the rice. I do that (patting and smoothing) when making fruit bars and the base for my cheesecake as well as cookies, etc. Nice to see that she’s applying what she sees and changing it to experiencing it herself.

Transferring from small to big jug – very easy, no spillage, pour all at one go.

Pouring from a big jug to a very small container – not so easy, requires some skill and manoeuvring. Some spillage!

So focused!

Cleaning up some spillage; this time, we did some transferring using a teaspoon and two small containers.

Patting down the rice!

Adapting the method; instead of leaving both containers on the tray, she picks one up and makes herself more comfortable (I would think).

Getting to the right shot is always hard when you have a squirming toddler. Here’s a look at how things turned out in front of the camera before we got to the above picture.

It’s not fun to deal with problems in children and eczema is one of them. Noah’s lovely unblemished skin started disappearing in February and now one month later, as you can see in the picture above, it is not a pretty sight.

The doctor gave us a prescription for a balm but it contains liquid parrafin and vaseline which I’m not keen on using as they aren’t all that natural to begin with. So I went out and bought a calendula balm which was made up of 85% calendula infused oil (sunflower oil), shea butter, chamomile, cocoa butter and Vitamin E as a preservative. While the rash started to heal, pimples appeared instead. So I switched to a cream I made up at home using shea butter and calendula-infused sunflower and sweet almond oil and put him on it for two days. The dry skin got better but the pimple situation got worse. He started getting pimples in places where there was smooth skin!!!!!!!!!!!!! Someone alerted me about sweet almond oil being a possible allergen so after reading and researching, I discovered that people can be allergic to sweet almond oil AND shea butter because they are classified as tree nuts and fall under “nuts” in the allergen list. Gah.

I decided to reformulate my cream but after more research, I discovered that a lot of butters out there are based on nuts and I was left with either cocoa butter or mango butter. I have them in stock but the trouble is that he could be allergic to either one of them. So my current option now is to go single ingredient – something I should have done from the start. I’ll be infusing some calendula in either organic sunflower oil or organic olive oil. In the meantime, I’m discontinuing use of both the calendula balm and his homemade cream just to confirm if it is the shea butter in either one of the items. I’ll also have to stop either nuts of any sort, eg pistachios, macadamic, almonds and so forth.

*sigh*

I salute mothers out there who have to deal with this – I knew it was hard but knowing is very different from actually experiencing it. I do hope that the paed will suggest something when I see her on Wednesday – an allergen test or something would help shed light on what is bothering him. In the meantime, I’ll enjoy the silver lining that comes along with this – him sleeping well, eating well and just being a happy baby. Thankgoodness! I don’t think I would be able to cope this well if he was fussing and crying all the time!

• No more scolding when she has accidents like wetting her pants, wetting her bed
• Wearing clothes that she can easily take off – stockings (all her pants have buttons – not potty friendly)
• Using training pants instead of cloth diapers (except at night)
• Asking every 1 hour or so.

I also went online and hunt around for a potty book as I read that some kids are more responsive to books instead of just explanation. A quick search gave me a very pretty illustrated book on how important it is to go on a potty (see the picture below).

While waiting for the book to arrive, we did the above mentioned methods. So far, so good. She tells us when she needs to go on the potty and no more rushing for it. I let her play, read on the potty – which explains why she has a chunk of Mega Blocks in her hand (she is pretending that it’s a camera). She even wakes up from her naps to go pee instead of peeing in the bed/diaper like she used to (although this can still be a hit and miss sometimes).

And here is the best news of all.

Last night, somehow in between all the chaos of handling Noah, phone call, etc, Eva went to bed without – *drumroll* – a diaper. And we didn’t even realize it until this morning. But guess what? The bed was dry and so was she. Could be first timers luck, I reckon. Hehehe.