Living Like the Kings — Living Like the Kings

Q&A – part 2

by Kat on February 18, 2012

in Baby, Balance, kids, Marriage, Parenthood, Work

Hi there! Happy Saturday!

Our weekend is full of shopping and packing (we’re going on vacation next week!), so while I do my 9th load of laundry, you get to be entertained by some more answers to your questions. Here we go.

Aimee says “I am curious about her transition from pureed food to table food. When did you start that and how did she react to the new textures? I am getting to that point with my son but so far he doesn’t like anything that isn’t pureed.”

Aimee-

We started by introducing Peanut to puffs around 7.5 months. Once she discovered that she could pick food up with her fingers, she pretty much weaned herself off pureed food and would only eat food that she could handle herself. After puffs we gave her bananas, avocado, and some other soft foods. Then came macaroni, cheese (cheese sticks were the best), grilled cheeses, chicken nuggets, tofu, hot dogs, grapes and the list goes on! I found the comments on the post linked above to be super helpful, we well as my favorite baby food blog: http://wholesomebabyfood.momtastic.com/

Meghan says “Have you transitioned to a sippy cup yet or are you not concerned because she doesn’t have teeth yet? How was her transition to whole milk? Did the temperature bother her? I am constantly stressed over this because my daughter HATES the sippy cup and loves her bottle. She isn’t quite 12 months yet and so I am trying to plan out how I will transition her to whole milk and eventually, the sippy.”

Meghan-

We are in the very beginning stages of swapping Peanut out for a sippy instead of a bottle. As of right now, that’s not going too well. I do have a post coming up this week with advice from the other readers – it rocks! As for whole milk, we did start the whole milk transition. Right now Peanut is drinking about half breast milk half whole milk mixture, until we run out of breast milk. We are still warming up most of her bottles, but when she’s super impatient, she takes it cold.

Happiness Is… says “1. How in the world do you get Peanut to eat so much variety? I offer Thatcher everything and he will just play with it. Did she do that at first? Is playing with table food the beginning? Feels so wasteful and he literally makes a face if I try to feed it to him.
2. How many kids do you all want? Have you thought about #2? (if this is too personal, I get it!)
3. Do you think you will always work? Any working mom guilt? How do you cope?
4. Has y’alls relationship gotten stronger/better since Peanut? How has it changed?”

Dear Ashley-

Oh boy.

1. We have always given Peanut pretty much whatever we’re eating. I have no idea if she’s a good eater because of what I ate while she was in my belly, if it’s because we introduced her to as many different tastes as possible during the early solid food stages, or if we just lucked out. To be honest, I’m guessing we just lucked out. We do have some good days and some bad days – sometimes Peanut will eat everything from noodles to cheese sticks to tofu to veggies. Other times she will cry until we give her some peas or cheerios.

2. Jon and I want 2 kids – we want the kids to be about 2-3 years apart, but we’re definitely not ready yet. We’ve always talked about having 2 kids and when we finally decided that we were ready for a baby, we knew that we were committing to 2 kids and that they would be 2-3 years apart. After Monday night’s incident though, I’m not sure that my heart can handle another little part of me walking around, bumping into things.

3. Work. Oh work. Yes, I do think that I will always work. Partly because that is the only monetary option, partly because I would be driven insane if I had to stay home with the kids all week long.

The working mom guilt – that’s a tough one. Some days I think about the fact that our daycare sees Peanut for more of her waking hours than we do and that they’re practically raising her. I wonder if Peanut would be happier if she was home with me, following her schedule (which she loves) and getting all of my attention. These are tough days. But most days I’m thankful that I get to work. I love that Peanut has the chance to interact with other kids and adults on a daily basis. I love that she’s learning to socialize and to be more patient with adult attention. Selfishly, I love the feeling when I walk in the office, pour myself a cup of coffee and sit down in my chair. It’s actually relaxing. I also love the thrill of working and my career – the challenge, the socialization, the things I learn every single day. These days I’m happy and balanced.

Cope? I don’t have any good advice here. I just let myself get through the rough days and know that there are better days ahead – days when I’ll feel complete. When I can’t take it any more, I blog. It’s a great outlet – and it almost always makes me feel better to read about others who are going through the same trouble. Other times I go out to Starbucks. I know, that’s just silly. But when I’m thinking about the fact that I just dropped my kid off at daycare and that I won’t see her again until that evening, I drive my butt over to a Starbucks before work and I drink my latte while it’s still warm. That helps.

4. Sheesh, Ashley, you are going right after the hard stuff, aren’t ya?

Our relationship has changed in some ways, but not in others. It’s so weird that I’m not even sure that I can explain. In some aspects we are stronger than ever – there is this little human being that we made that binds us in ways that we’ve never felt before. I look at Jon and I cannot believe what an amazing father he is. We make a great team – the two of us. It’s almost as if we’ve got this child care down to a science. In some other aspects it’s harder – we have different views and opinions on certain things (i.e. emergency situations or even just small bumps and bruises). There are so many things to take care of that at the end of the day we’re both exhausted and can barely keep our eyes open. It’s also harder to just drop everything and go out to dinner to refuel the love fire. Between the $$ (sitters, dinners out) and the time (sitters, leaving Peanut), we get out about 1/10th of the time, if not less. Yet in some sense, it’s still the same. Jon and I joke with one another, we get our evenings on the couch, we hang out and drink some wine or watch Big Bang theory. Because we both work together, we still pull pranks on each other in the office or grab a lunch out.

Just like any other challenge in marriage, you weigh your options, find some compromise and make sure that the good days outweigh the bad days. And they do – by a lot.

Phew. I feel like I need a break after that one.

If the questions above apply to you, I’d love to hear your answers!

(sorry for any typos here – I’m entertaining a 1 year old while finishing this up – so no time to proof read.)

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Q&A – take 1

by Kat on February 17, 2012

in Uncategorized

kari @ Running Ricig says “I wonder where Addison would get such a sweet, stylish vest.”

Dear Kari,

Our very dear friends purchased this awesome item of clothing for us. You may know them – blonde, Swedish, married to a hilarious barefoot runner, owners of one of the coolest dogs on Earth? Ring a bell? No? Then quit fishing for compliments. (for those that feel a little lost right now – Kari got Peanut that super awesome vest).

Seriously though – most of the clothes in Peanut’s closet are from our friends or family. Between gifts and amazing hand-me-downs, Peanut is one lucky gal.

carrie t says “Do you call Addison, Peanut to her in real life or just on the blog? Does she get confused as to who Peanut and Addison are?”

Carrie,

We actually have about a gazillion nicknames for Peanut – but primarily we call her Peanut, P, Addi-pie, or Addison. Thankfully, our daycare calls her Addi or Addison, so I think she knows that’s her name.

I really hope that she’s not confused when she’s older, but I don’t think we’re helping matters all that much. Between her recurring nicknames, we also call her random things throughout the day like, Peanut-butter-face, Pie-face, P-nizzle, Pigtails, and many others. We should probably quit doing that. How easily are kids confused?

carrie t also says “Oh It though of another one. Does Peanut know the Russian animal sounds yet? lol I’m gonna have to watch that video when I get to work.

Dude,

That video is ridiculous. I still laugh at Jon’s straight face. But, yes, we’re teaching Peanut English and Russian, which includes the sounds. We have this awesome app, Peekaboo Barn, that features animals and names them, as well as lets you record your own language! Usually we play it in English and I tell Peanut the Russian sounds and animal names after the English ones show up. The only one she’s picked up on so far is Moo, which is the same in both languages. We’re probably confusing her with that as well.

I think we’re going to have a very confused kid.

Julie says “Can you talk about your breast milk to whole milk transition? (or are you still giving breast milk?) Also are you still giving Peanut a bottle or has she gone to the sippy cup? And what was that process like?”

Julie,

Aw man, we’re not doing too well in the whole bottle to sippy cup transition department. Hopefully my previous post gives us all some good advice.

As for breast milk, we introduced a little whole milk added to the breast milk around 12 months. I pumped for 11 months and we had a ton of breast milk stored, so I phased breast feeding out and Peanut has been drinking bottles with breast milk for the past couple of months.

Right now she is on a half-breast milk half-whole milk mix. She didn’t seem to mind the transition in milk too much. The bottle versus sippy cup is a whole different story.

Our plan is to phase the breast milk out completely when it runs out in the next couple of months.

That’s it for today folks. Come on back tomorrow to learn about our transition from baby food to finger foods, our thoughts on baby #2, my working mom guilt (gulp), and some fun poll questions (Ashley decided to give me both spectrums – the super deep serious and the creative fun questions).

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Bottles to sippy cups – got advice?

by Kat on February 16, 2012

in Baby

While you’re all gettings your Q’s in order, I thought I would reach out to those of you who are going through or went through the whole “ditch the bottle” ordeal and see if you have any advice for us.

Funny enough, as I was writing this post, I noticed that many of you have the same questions – so maybe we can kill two birds with one stone. We’ll get advice and in turn answer some of your questions. I’ll post some of the advice form the comments in a separate post.

[ps- the photos have nothing to do with the post - I just like them.]

At Peanut’s 12 month appointment the doctor told us that it’s time to start phasing the bottle.

Ditch the bottle? Sure! This is going to be no big deal. Peanut loves her sippy cup.

Wrong.

To give you a little background, Peanut has a 6 oz bottle of milk (still half breastmilk half whole milk mixture) in the morning when she wakes up, twice during the day (usually after naps), and right before bed. We were told/read that the daytime bottles are the easiest to swap, so that’s just what we tried.

One day, after nap time, shortly after Peanut’s 1st birthday, we poured her milk into a sippy cup and tried to give it to her. You would think that I just stuck her with a huge needle. The kid took one look at the sippy, one very angry look at me, and wailed! She kept crying, throwing the sippy cup down, and freaking out over and over again for the past month. We’ve given in and swapped it for a bottle almost every time.

At daycare we’ve asked the teachers to try and give Peanut a sippy cup for one of her “bottles” since she only takes 1 nap there. Do you think that worked? Nope. She just stopped drinking one bottle.

We’ve also tried to swap sippy cups (we tried two or three so far), giving her something yummy like Kefir (this actually worked but I don’t want to give her that much sugar every day, plus it makes a huge mess), and even delaying giving her the bottle in hopes that she might just be fussy after nap time. But nothing has worked so far.

In fact, as a result of our attempts to switch Peanut to a sippy for her milk, she’s pretty much stopped drinking water from the cup as well. (She will drink water from another sippy cup that we haven’t put milk into before).

So, to those that asked the questions about us switching over to a sippy cup? Yeah, that’s where we’re at.

And for anyone that’s been through it – we’re all dying to hear some advice!

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I’m not creative today, so get your Q’s ready

by Kat on February 15, 2012

in Q and A

I’m not feeling very creative lately – I don’t know if it’s because I was on a huge blogging kick this past month or because I’m still in shock from our Monday night. Regardless of the reason, I’m outta good ideas and in order to give myself some time to recharge, I’m going to answer some of your questions!

Got some Questions? Post them in the comments and I’ll answer them in a post! Feel free to browse previous Q&A posts by clicking on the button above.

In case you’re here to browse pictures of my little nugget, I won’t disappoint.

Our little busybody has been on a walking spree lately – she walks from one place to another, plops, turns around and goes again. It’s like someone wound her up and asked her to get in as much trouble as she could manage. And, peeps, it’s a lot!