Garden 2014

This photo pretty much shows what has happened in my garden so far this year. My daffodils came up again this year. And Lucy sometimes joins me as I try to get a little done. I've already introduced her to my barefoot and big hat gardening style.

I do have plans for this year's garden, but nothing like the great expansion last year. I'm adding a couple of blocks of width to the Ghetto, and I'd like a stand for my water barrels so that I get better water pressure, but that's all the building I have in mind. I bought some broccoli and Brussels sprout plants to transplant into my garden. I didn't get seeds started in February, so I'm taking a shortcut. I am starting seeds for tomatoes, beans, and squashes that won't be planted for a while. One of my strawberry pots broke, so I'm transplanting the plants to the front bed where I plant snap peas. I plan to plant root veggies, hearty greens, and snap peas this week. Ater that I'll finish cleaning and prepping the Pea Haven, Annex, and Squash Ghetto for planting later this spring. And I'll probably remulch the blueberry patch, which is looking even more promising this year.

Lucy, Matt, and I are going to have to negotiate how much time I have to garden this spring and summer. I will garden. Not only do I enjoy it and benefit from the exercise and the produce I get, but I also read that there's a study that shows that digging in dirt helps with depression symptoms. That seems like plenty of reasons for my gardening time to be a family priority.

Eat It Up with a Spoon

At Lucy's 4-month check up, the pediatrician said we could start spoon feeding Lucy  some rice cereal mixed with breast milk. He said it was about getting her used to texture rather than supplementing her diet for nutritional reasons. So we tried it. Lucy loved the spoon--she was willing to sip breast milk or herbal tea from a spoon--but she kept spitting out the rice cereal. We tried it again a few days later and a time or two after that, but she didn't like it.

I did let her start tasting liquids: beef broth, fresh lemon juice, Candycane Lane herbal tea. She liked them all. So when she showed interest in my pureed squash soup, I gave her a little. She loved it! She even sucked the dried bits off the spoon. I was impressed, especially since I had added sweet curry powder to the soup to make it more interesting. (There's a certain line of cooks in my family who like to experiment to make things "interesting.") The next day I added more curry powder to my soup, and when she tried it, she still really liked it. The next day I had ginger carrot soup, which she also liked. That's how I figured out that she just didn't like plain rice cereal. After that she tried and liked cran-apple and cran-grape juices. I would have thought the cranberry would be too bitter, but she thought it was great. So we decided it was OK to try solids other than rice cereal.

Avocado
When we went out for Mexican food, Lucy wanted to eat, too, so I mashed up some of the avocado that Matt didn't want on his fish tacos. Success! We took the leftover avocado home and fed it to her for a few days. I even tried mixing some rice cereal into the avocado, and she ate it.

Oatmeal Cereal
On my sister Kristin's advice, I bought Lucy some baby oatmeal cereal. Unlike the rice cereal, she would eat that plain.

Sweet Potatoes
Next I mashed some sweet potatoes for her. She wasn't impressed even after I added curry powder. We'll try it again sometime.

Peaches
I looked at what baby food flavors Kroger had that looked good. I bought two jars each of peach and mango. They sounded good to me. We tried the peach, and Lucy liked it. I then tried mixing in some oatmeal cereal, and that was a huge hit. It makes sense. I really like Quaker's peach almond oatmeal and granola bars. A week or two later I served her a pouch version of peach baby food, and she ate the whole pouch in two days. She never eats that much. She really likes peaches.

Squash
Kristin had given me several jars of unopened baby food that my nephew Alton didn't need, so I got those out of the closet. Lucy liked squash baby food, especially with curry powder and rice cereal mixed in. It made her smell like an Indian restaurant, partially because she got it on her ear and under her chin and we didn't find it until bathtime.

Kiwi
At church on Sundays, we have food and fellowship after service. This week there was kiwi fruit, so I mashed up some of the part without seeds and fed it to her. She liked it. I watched her pretty closely after that one. I know of people with kiwi allergies. But Lucy had no reaction.

Apple
When we were at Target in Louisville, I bought some apple baby food in a pouch and got an attachable spoon. It's pretty handy for on-the-go feeding. I fed Lucy apples between shopping stops, and she loved it. However, she seems to have eaten too much and to have inherited my family's reaction to apples. She had the biggest diaper blow out ever. I had to clean poop off of her legs, down to her calves, before actually opening the diaper. So we're cautious with the apples now.

Mango
Lucy LOVES mango! Her first taste was a pineapple mango smoothie from McDonald's. The post-apple diaper blowout was cleaned up in a McDonald's bathroom, and it was so traumatic for both of us that I bought and shared a smoothie. She loved it. Several days later she was getting fussy at Walmart and we still had errands to run, so I bought and shared a mango juice drink. She loved it. And I bought a different mango juice brand on sale yesterday and put it in a cup with a straw. She learned to drink from a straw just so she could get to the mango juice. This morning I gave her some mango baby food. She's not a big fan of that. I can't blame her. It tastes really processed and not fresh, especially compared to the good mango drinks she's had.

Banana
Matt and I don't like bananas, so I tried really hard to sell them as yummy. I want her to like everything if possible. I don't want our preferences to limit her. But she doesn't like bananas much either. The first time she tried them, she spit them out. The second time she swallowed a little. And every time since she's mostly spit them out. I'll try mixing them with oatmeal and/or adding spices to see if we get a different result.

Carrots
She liked them just fine. The last time I served them with ginger powder mixed in, and she liked them even more.

Pears
She likes them. She makes faces when she eats them, but she keeps opening her mouth for more. That means she really likes them. The last time I served them with pumpkin pie spice mixed in. She liked her "fancy pears." I liked them, too.

Green Beans
Baby food green beans have the same problem as mango. All the happy vegetable freshness is missing. She ate green beans but wasn't excited about them. I tried mixing in garlic powder, but she didn't care. She hasn't eaten much baby food for a couple of days. I'm not sure if the problem is the food or her appetite. I'll certainly try green beans again. I thought the garlic helped them quite a bit.

Apple Blueberry
I expected a better response. She was willing to eat a little but wasn't eager. I tried mixing it with oatmeal and didn't get a better response. I'm not sure if it's appetite or taste preference that caused her lack of enthusiasm. I didn't push her to eat much. I remember the last apple incident.

What's Next?
Now that she's tried quite a few things, I can give her some mixtures that will allow her to try new foods with old ones we know she can tolerate. I've got jars or pouches of pear-spinach, carrot-corn, apple-guava, pear-peach-strawberry, and apple-broccoli. I also found some green pea and mint baby food at Big Lots. That's a classic combination I'd like to sample. I'll try other herbs and spices. I've got quite a few. Sage would be good with the squash. Perhaps cilantro in some avocado. I've considered making a tea of herbs and using it to thin the food instead of adding fibrous herbs directly to the baby food. I'll try cooking and mashing some fresh veggies to see if she likes that better than the jarred baby food. And who knows what we may come across at a restaurant. Ethiopian greens or cabbage? A taste of hummus or falafel? We're excited that she seems to be an adventurous eater because we like all kinds of food. Eventually, she should be able to eat produce from my garden: turnips, peas, green beans. That's one of the things I'm looking forward to most.

My Baby Makes Me Puke

There are many things about babies that you could say might make you want to puke (typically figuratively speaking): poopy diapers, curdled milk spit into your cleavage. But Lucy literally makes me need to puke. OK, so it's not just Lucy. It's partially from falling at KMart and having a C-section (not at the same time). But Lucy makes it happen more frequently. I should start at the beginning (or at least a little earlier in the middle).

For a while, even before Lucy was born, I've been having what I call "digestive episodes." First, it feels like heartburn. Antacids don't help. And it gets worse as pain starts in my back and ribs. A few times it has ended with a bowel movement (which made me think it was constipation), but most of the time it ends with vomiting. The last few times I've made myself vomit after several hours of pain so that the episode would pass and let me get back to caring for Lucy. (Last time I held her to try to bring on the vomiting--holding holding Lucy makes me feel worse--but I gave her to Matt before the actual vomiting started.)  I've considered that the problem was gall bladder or poor diet. I even noticed that it happened about the same time every month and thought it might be hormonal. But I decided to ask my chiropractor about it since there's back and rib pain. He said pressure in the mid-back can cause my symptoms. Of course, you'd expect a chiropractor to say something like that, but I decided to go with that answer for now because it doesn't involve lots of expensive medical tests. And I already knew I have mid-back issues. I asked the chiropractor what I could do if an episode struck when his office wasn't open, and he showed me some stretches. On Monday, I started having an "episode" in the afternoon and was able to make an appointment with the chiropractor half an hour later. I tried the stretches before we went to the chiropractor's office, and they helped a little bit. When the chiropractor adjusted me, I popped all over the place, top to bottom, especially in my mid-back. When I got home, I took a nap and woke up feeling fine. No vomiting necessary. I think the chiropractor might be right about my back causing my digestive issues.

What would be ideal is to prevent the episodes altogether. That may be tricky. I will try to strengthen my back muscles, but my back is permanently jacked up because of an accident. When I worked at KMart after my first year of college, I fell carrying boxes and because my arms were full, my torso caught all my weight as I landed on an empty wooden pallet. I knocked some ribs out of place and injured my mid-back. For several years, I needed regular adjustments to nudge the ribs back in place. And my mid-back problems are still the ones most likely to send me to the chiropractor. (I've also had injuries to my neck and tail bone, which get adjusted at the same appointments, but which don't usually cause me to make appointments.) I asked a chiropractor years ago if there was anything I could do to fix my back, and he said that my back is hyper-flexible, which makes it easy to get out of whack. So there's no easy fix.

My only solution is to change what I do so that I can try to keep my mid-back from getting out of whack as often. And that's where Lucy comes in. My episode on Monday came after Matt had been out of town and I was the only one picking Lucy up for several days. I was also trying to get her to sleep in her crib, which meant extra lifting. I think that's why my back was in such bad shape and set off an episode. And yesterday I was carrying her to the kitchen to find myself something to eat and regurgitated into my mouth. I promptly put her down and was fine. (See. My baby makes me puke.)  Carrying Lucy puts a lot of pressure on my mid-back, so I've been trying to carry her less. I carry her directly to some place and set her down instead of holding her while I'm doing something. Fortunately, she's getting pretty good at playing by herself, so I can leave her in the living room while I heat her baby food and do other little tasks like that. I also try not to run errands with her any more than I have to. Getting her into and out of the car is tough. Matt is picking up the slack by picking Lucy up more often. He transports her like he did after I had the C-section. (The C-section didn't help my core stability and so is also part of the back problem.) Unfortunately, the inability to lift her has set back our sleeping plans a little. We were trying to get her used to the crib, but that's too much lifting for me, so she sleeps part of the time on a mattress on the floor and part of the time with me in the recliner. At least my goal of being able to put her down and get other things done is met. Today I got a lot of cleaning done in the kitchen while she napped on the mattress for an hour and a half.

Other than not carrying Lucy, the only things I've figured out to do are to regularly stretch my back as the chiropractor showed me and to go for adjustments as soon as something feels out of whack instead of waiting for an episode.

I feel bad that I can't carry Lucy around, but I try to make sure that we sit together to make up for the other holding that she's missing. There is a silver lining: she gets more practice being alone for a minute or two at a time and entertaining herself as well as more time with her daddy, both of which are good things. And a puke-free momma is certainly a good thing for all of us.