krisalis

Climbing, cruising and making funny noises at his dad. 8 1/2 months old.

(I was having trouble viewing the embedded videos on Firefox earlier today, but it seems to be working fine now…hmm. Hopefully you can see it.)

I have been experimenting with my crock pot cooking recently.

I tried a couple of recipes that Boo suggested, a couple of recipes that I found on the interweb that I thought looked interesting, and a couple of recipes that I made up myself.

So far, my favourite 3 recipes are:

1) root veggies and turkey bratwurst, cooked in vegetable stock Stick a bunch of peeled and chunky pieces of root veggies in the bottom of the pot. I like to use a couple of sweet potatoes, a few leeks, a couple of onions, couple of cloves of garlic, some carrots and parsnips. Pour a carton of vegetable stock over the mixture along with half a cup of water, then stick the sausages on top of that and let the concoction bubble away on low for 8 hours or so. I like to eat this in a shallow bowl with a couple of slices of buttered seduction bread from Wholefood to mop at the soupy sauce. Mmm.

2) lamb shanks and potatoes Pop a couple of lamb shanks into the crock pot along with a selection of the vegetables of your choice. I used potatoes, onions, a couple of cloves of garlic and some carrots for good measure. Pour a cup of red wine over the mixture, along with some stock (I think I used vegetable stock). Cook on low for 8 hours.

3) pot roast with veggies I made this recently when we had a few friends over for dinner. It has to be the easiest, least-stressful way to feed 8 people (6 guests). Put big slab of beef in crock pot, and then surround it with a selection of vegetables available – I used potatoes, sweet potatoes, leeks, turnip, carrots, onions and garlic. Pour one carton of beef stock and one bottle of dark beer (I used Shiner) over the contents, then top up with water if needed. Cook on high for 4 hours then low for another 4 hours (I needed to cook on high for a while because my crock pot was fill to bursting and it would have taken too long to cook it all on low. I’m sure 8 hours on low would be fine for a normal sized dinner). Then about an hour before dinner was to be served, I poured out a bunch of the soupy gravy in the crockpot to make some gravy (just add flour and a bit of butter to make a thick roux gravy sauce), and added half a head of roughly chopped cabbage to the pot to cook. We served this up with some yummy wholewheat bread from Wholefoods (a loaf of hemp bread and a loaf of seduction) and a couple of bottles of Chianti.

OK. Bed time for me. More on the crock pot kick later.

Thanksgiving Dinner Originally uploaded by krisalis.

Happy Thanksgiving y’all!

First things first – the boy! He has a tooth! His first tooth! We realised he’d probably been teething, but frankly, people have been telling us “oh, he’s teething” for about 4 months now, and I got fed up with checking for emerging toothipegs a while back. So imagine my surprise when he started gumming on my knuckle yesterday, and I felt a tooth!

Also, Alexander can pull himself up to standing! He’s been working on this skill for the past week or so, and he’s starting to get pretty good at getting up onto his knees. Sometimes he makes it all the way up to his feet, but then once he’s there, he doesn’t seem to know what to do, and will drop back down to his knees again.

This is the month Alexander really started getting the hang of the whole eating thing. He has expanded his food consumption to include bread sticks, teething biscuits, zwieback toast, prunes, baby yoghurt as well as his existing array of baby cereals and assorted vegetables. His favourite foods seem to be applesauce, baby yoghurt and avocado (or avomadaco, as Mark calls it), although today he demolished two cubes of mushed carrots, which is the first time he hasn’t turned his nose up at carrots.

Alexander has settled into a more regular routine in the past month – he wakes up sometime between 6am to 7.30am, nurses and has some solids, and goes for a morning walk in the stroller with Rosie and Mark (the order of these events sometimes gets switched around), then takes his first nap around 9am. He sleeps for anywhere between 30mins to an hour for the first nap (sometimes as long as and hour and a half, but that is rare). He eats lunch around 12noon and either nurses again if I’m home, or has about 7oz of expressed milk if I’m away. He takes his second naps around 1pm, and sleeps anywhere between 40mins to an hour and a half for this nap. He has dinner at around 4.30-5pm and has some watered down juice or water to drink. Then it’s bath time around 6.15-6.30pm, followed by a story and then I nurse him and he goes to sleep by around 7-7.30pm. He typically wakes up again between 10pm and 11pm, at which time I go in and breastfeed him.

I’d love to say that he sleeps through the night after that feed, but that would be a big fat fib. The boy has completely forgotten how to sleep through the night and regularly wakes up at least once anytime between 2am and 6am, whinging and crying, grumbly, awake and wanting attention. And it’s taking it’s toll on me and on Mark. We are tired. Tired, tired, tired. If we go in, he calms down pretty quick, but then he wants to play. But if we don’t go in he cries and cries and cries and screams, and then no one gets any sleep. What seems to work the best for us right now is to go in as quickly as we can when he starts crying to give him a pat and reassure him we are there, calm him down and try to settle him back in to bed, then we leave. Sometimes it works, but other times….not so much.

This past month, Alexander started rolling over and sleeping on his tummy. At first, this really freaked me out. After all the constant bombardment of advice that we MUST, at all costs, put our baby to sleep on his back or he would DIE DIE DIE, it was hard to let that worry go, and more than once I went in to his room and rolled him back over to his back. Which of course left me with an awake, annoyed baby, who would roll back onto his tummy as soon as I got him back to sleep on his back anyway. So I gave up that battle and now although I still put Alexander down on his back, he immediately rolls over onto his tum, turns his head to one side, puts his arms down by his sides and sticks his little bum in the air. It’s cute. He also moves about all over his crib and sleeps in the oddest positions. For example, on the Alexander vision monitor I can currently see that he is curled up in a little ball with his head crammed up against the side of the crib railings on the far end of the crib from where he originally fell asleep. I don’t know how that can be comfortable, but, whatever…as long as he’s sleeping, I’m happy.

Sleep challenges aside, Alexander is a super great kid. He’s smiley and happy and talkative. He loves bath time. He loves to play in his swing. He’s learning to speed crawl and loves to crawl around exploring the house. He has sadly outgrown his exersaucer, although he now enjoys using it as a type of obstacle course, and loves to clamber through the base. He likes to crawl after Rosie and tries to climb on her and pet her. Rosie is not amused. He also likes to try to splash in Rosie’s water dish. We’re baby proofing things as fast as we can, but each time we think we’ve got things covered, he finds something new to get into.

Such is life!

Breaking News Originally uploaded by krisalis.

Breaking news received via email: Asia Bongs Recover but Mood Cautious. Made me laugh.

Eek! Originally uploaded by krisalis.

My office appears to have a rodent in residence. I am horrified. I keep imagining little beady rat eyes looking at me while I work. It is disturbing.

Alexander’s crawling technique is getting better everyday. He is almost 8 months old in this video (1 week before his 8month birthday). He’s able to scramble over and under objects in his path (like the exersaucer) and he’s getting faster too. He’s also no longer restricted to crawling on just the carpet, and will happily scuttle over concrete, tiles and grass too.

He’s started trying to pull up on things as well, and can get himself to standing by pulling up on the magazine basket in the living room. We dropped the floor of his crib a few days ago, in anticipation of this new skill, and have already walked in to find him holding the railings and kneeling in his crib, wailing at us to raise the alarm that his is awake and ready for action.

I can hardly believe how fast he’s growing up!

Go Owls! Originally uploaded by krisalis.

My sister’s cross country team won Regionals today! Wooo They’re going to Nationals! I am proud.

Oh Rose Originally uploaded by krisalis.

Rosie waits for stray cheerios.

Snack Attack Originally uploaded by krisalis.

Afternoon tea – cheerios and apple juice.