Edible Baby Safe No Cook Play Dough

I've been experimenting lately with sensory play with Jean. Lena was perfectly content with toys and self entertained fairly well. Typical toys only hold Jean's interest for 10 to 15 minutes at a time (if we're lucky).

This week's project was creating baby safe edible play dough. I found the original recipe here. This is the basic ingredient list:

The original recipe calls for unsweetened applesauce, but I didn't have that in the house, so I used a 1/2 cup of cinnamon applesauce instead.

First you want to mix together the corn starch and rice cereal. But don't make the mistake that I did with the mixer and hit the mix before the lock. It makes a huge mess.

Next you can mix in the wet ingredients. This will make it crumbly.

You will have to knead it together to make it nice and smooth. Once you have it good and mixed together you can separate it and add the food coloring and mix well.

I only had gel food coloring because that's what I use in my regular baking. I highly recommend using liquid coloring because it was very hard to get the color to mix well.

Also, the original recipe recommended using the rice cereal to dry it out as need. I found the corn starch to be a lot more absorbent for drying the oil and just sprinkled a little at a time while mixing in my colors.

The dough can be stored for up to 2 weeks in your refrigerator. 

Overall it ended up being a fun project and a great day.

Grounding a Teenager - The Punishment Fits the Crime

We have been at constant odds with Lena about her lack of cleanliness. Basically she's a complete slob and she really only has one "chore." She's in charge of emptying the self cleaning litter box. Let me repeat... SELF. CLEANING.

She left this morning to go to my parent's house for the night. I went to throw in a load of laundry while Jean was napping. Now, I know my boys. They HATE a dirty box. So when I discovered some cat mess on the floor next to the box I knew immediately it hadn't been emptied. When I removed the cover, this is what I found...

Yes, I know, it's disgusting. This lead to a little further investigation.

Needless to say I pulled out some disposable rubber gloves and got to work on completely cleaning the cat box. This of course gave me time to plot my revenge.

When she returns home tomorrow she will calmly and quietly be presented with an envelope containing her grounding daily chore requirements and will be informed that she will need to turn over her cell phone, laptop, and Kindle. 

How to Deal with a Teething Baby

Enough said....

Why We Stopped Feeding Our Baby Gerber

For anyone who has read any of my previous posts, you know that our newest addition has terrible acid reflux. In fact, it lead to a bit of a meltdown for me about 3 weeks ago. Thankfully I work for an amazing company with the best boss I could ever have wished for and have been able to work part-time in the office and part-time from home. Since my husband I work opposite shifts, it allowed us to pull her out of daycare and keep her home with a parent around the clock.

It does come with it's challenges, but it's worth every second.

We've known from the very first week we brought her home that she had an overly sensitive stomach, even if our original pediatrician did basically think we were looney.

We were getting reports for the past couple months when we'd pick her up that on certain days she was "extra puky." Now that we're the one's feeding her every meal we discovered their was a pattern.

Any time we fed her vegetables, specifically orange ones, she would always end up with an upset stomach and start spitting up her food soon after eating. We'd noticed her spitting up the Gerber baby food, but she's been spitting up more than she should from day one and we hadn't been the one's feeding her most of her meals so we didn't put two and two together until now. Especially since other other girls had been Gerber Babies.

However, this caused us to start closely examining the label. We noticed that Gerber adds ascorbic acid to a good majority of their foods to "maintain color."

ASCORBIC ACID IS SYNTHETIC VITAMIN C. TO MAKE ASCORBIC ACID YOU TAKE CORN SYRUP AND MIX IT WITH HYDROCHLORIC ACID.

PROLONGED EXPOSURE TO ASCORBIC ACID CAN CAUSE THE FOLLOWING:

• DIARRHEA
• NAUSEA
• VOMITING
• ABDOMINAL PAIN
• HEARTBURN

Why is this being added to our babies food????

For the last several days she's been getting the Beech Nut organic baby food and like magic the upset tummy, constant gas, and spitting up her food has completely stopped.

Update on Meltdown

My company is truly amazing and I'm grateful for it. I started my new schedule Wednesday. I'm working 5 hours a day in the office Monday through Friday and 10 to 15 hours a week from home.

We officially pulled Jean out of daycare and we couldn't be happier right now.

Inevitable Mommy Meltdown

The last year of our lives has been peddle to the metal, don't let off the gas, complete and total overdrive. We purchased a home, got a new puppy, and had a baby. So when I flipped my proverbial shit two days ago, it didn't really come as a surprise to my husband.

He has been suffering through 3rd shift for the last several months, Usually he's a wonderful, helping, attentive man who pitches in around the house and with the kids. However, this shift leaves me with a zombie shell of my husband who has left me feeling alone for the last 3 months as I juggle everything from sun up to hours past sun down by myself.

Thank goodness it's almost over!

A couple nights ago he woke up mid-evening when he really needs to be sleeping. Literally for the 14th night in a row the baby was crying endlessly no matter what I did and the 3rd day in a row Lena made her own dinner because I couldn't.

Through groggy eyes from him and teary eyes from me our conversation started simply...

Me to James: "I really need to talk to you."

James to me: "You need to stay home, don't you?"

Me to James: "I need to cut back... Before I completely lose my sanity."

When you look at Jean now, at 6 months, compared to when she was first born she appears to be a normal baby who's filled out nicely.

Overall, she's an extremely happy baby. 

We owe a lot of that to her being on medication for her infant reflux, but it's still a struggle EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. with her. 

I'm not certain that her current, shall we say quirks, are directly related to having reflux though. Honestly, I believe they have more to do with the bad habits she formed from having it back in the beginning when our original pediatrician told us repeatedly that she was just a "happy unhappy spitter." Looking back, I never really wrote more than the one post about this... Probably because Jean seriously practically never sleeps. 

Until now, I have never encountered an infant who can stay awake for 14 to 16 hours. On average, she will go through 2 week stretches of staying awake all day long, unless you're holding her, then the moment you set her down those beautiful blue eyes pop right open like one of those incredibly creepy vintage dolls. After about 2 to 2 1/2 weeks we'll usually get a day of reprieve from her sheer exhaustion before it starts all over again. 

On weekends, I can somewhat accommodate this and get her to sneak in 20 to 30 minute cat naps before half my body goes numb and I have to put her down. During the weekdays, I'm at work, so it's just not possible. I hate giving into her, but sometimes I just know she needs some form of a nap, no matter how small. 

Recently she has also added to her list not letting you out of her site even if she's in a good mood to start without crying. Seriously, I can't even pee without her whaling lately. This clearly is not working for me or for her daycare. The first month or so she was there she did well. Lately, when I pick her up they have greeted me every day with sugar coated reviews of her behavior that I can tell is starting to wear on them almost as much as it is on me. 

I feel like I'm in a constant state of fight or flight. I'm tired of being sick (going on 6 weeks now), I'm tired of crying, I'm tired of snapping at my wonderful understanding husband because at this point everything annoys me, and I'm extremely tired of being tired. At this point I'm popping pills for an endless list of ailments. Headache pills in the morning from lack of sleep and headache pills at night from the crying. Caffeine on a constant steady intake from approximately 5am to 10pm every day also due to sleep deprivation. Then more medication to help with the horrific stomachache I'm getting in the evening from the caffeine overload. Allergy meds, birth control (yeah, we don't need another any time soon), and a whole host of vitamins for all the sniffles, aches, and general pains. 

My mommy intuition tells me that the base of these issues lies with not having a set routine day in and day out. My husband's schedule rotates and therefore her schedule rotates. We can't afford to pay any more than we already are for daycare, so on his days off she has to be off and I think this is what's really messing her up.

Needless to say something just has to give. With my husband gratefully returning to second shift we have an option. I can go down to part-time. Yes it's going to sting, but if we have to give up money I'd rather it be for more time with our child than less. He can watch Jean in the morning and then I'll take over in the afternoon. We did it for a while when I first returned to work and it was the perfect arrangement for us and for her.  

That is provided my boss will allow it. Tomorrow will be when I talk to him and see what he says. If he's unwilling to work with me, you may see posts about starting a home daycare in the future.