Category Archives: Health

Fun with food: Baby-led weaning

We started letting The Dude experiment with solid foods in mid-December, when we handed him a stick of either rutabaga or turnip (we don’t remember which anymore, but either way, it was from our garden).  He enjoyed it as an alternative teether as much as anything.

Since the beginning of the month, we’ve been making a more concerted effort to let him sit at the table and try some solid food at least once a day.  After reading the eponymous book, I decided Baby-led Weaning made a lot of sense:

Baby-led weaning is a way of introducing solid foods that allows babies to feed themselves – there’s no spoon feeding and no purées. The baby sits with the family at mealtimes and joins in when she is ready, feeding herself first with her fingers and later with cutlery (from the BLW leaflet).

So far, he’s tried rutabaga/turnip, carrot, sweet potato, rice cake, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, pear, apple, pumpkin, oatmeal, and homemade bread.  Many of his first foods came from our garden.

Yum, broccoli!

As this photo (and later, his diaper) attests, he was pretty into the broccoli.  Actually at one point during this “Fun With Cruciferous Veggies” meal, he was double-fisting broccoli and cauliflower.  At another point, he put the cauliflower in his mouth, leaving his hands free, one to hold broccoli, the other to hold cabbage.

Squash facial mask

Although this picture might look more like conventional puree spoon-feeding, the difference is that The Dude is “feeding” himself.  Also, we did not cook and puree this squash for him, we just happened to have extra from a big batch we prepared for pumpkin bread.

In addition to the website link above, you can read more about Baby-led Weaning here.  So far, we’re taking it slowly and having fun introducing the delicious, wholesome foods that make up a regular part of our diets.

Seriously people?

I don’t say much about my work here, in the interest of keeping work life separate from personal life.  Most days, I feel fortunate to be in a line of work that is in keeping with my interest in active transportation and health.  Other days, I just want to bang my head against the wall . . . .

I recently conducted a survey on walking and biking to school, and I couldn’t believe this response from the parent of a 9-year-old who lives six or seven blocks (residential blocks with sidewalks and low speed limits) from the school:

Reason for disinterest in walking school bus or bike train: “prefer to drive [child] myself”

Sadly, there were other, similar responses.  In my mind, this is inexcusable, both from a health and a resource standpoint.  There’s a reason we have a huge childhood obesity problem and the attitude behind statements like this play a big part.

I know, I know, there are millions of excuses, some legitimate, but most not.  Parents’ fear the risk of very rare events that get lots of media coverage, like kidnappings, and fail to see the much more real risk of a sedentary lifestyle: obesity, type 2 diabetes, and a host of other chronic diseases and health problems.

Don’t want your child to walk alone?  Okay, then get off the couch and walk with them. You’ll be doing something good for yourself and your child.  And I could cease the head banging over here.

Lids at last

Don’t let the food fool you, this post is actually about the container.  Though I must confess that I still own and use plastic (gasp!) containers on a regular basis, I am adamant about glass for some things, particularly warm or hot food.

I just don’t trust plastic, even the “BPA-free” plastic.  I figure it just contains some yet-to-be discovered, and perhaps worse, toxin leaching into my food.  I cringe when I see coworkers nuking their lunches in plastic containers — yikes!

Unless the food cools to room temperature first (at which point we’re probably in the bacteria-growth danger zone), we store all of our leftovers in glass containers.  We also use glass to transport our lunches for easy microwave heating at work.

Though it’s a compromise because it still involves plastic, we’ve found that glass containers with plastic lids work well.  This container style forms a relatively good seal for transporting the food to and from work, which can involve a good bit of jostling.  If we fill the containers to the brim, we refrigerate and put the lids on after the food is cool, and we remove the lids before reheating the food — one of those “not perfect, but good enough” solutions.

With normal use  and wear (i.e., not getting dropped on a hard surface), the glass containers have quite a long life.  That makes the plastic the weakest link.  After a couple of years of regular use, the plastic lids started showing their age, cracking at the edges, no longer forming a good seal.

Over a year ago, I searched for replacement lids in vain, frustrated that I couldn’t buy just a lid to go with the container that was still in perfectly good shape.  I’m rather certain I contacted the company directly and was told they didn’t make replacements — argh!  In the meantime, we wanted to expand our glass container collection and reluctantly purchased two sets of the same style, knowing about the lid issue.

For some reason, Matthew or I resumed the lid hunt a couple of months ago, and this time we our search ended in success! (3/4/14 Link Update: find replacement lids here.)

To maximize the shipment, we ordered a couple of spare lids for each size of glass container, including some for my MIL who has the same containers with the same lid issues.  (Speaking of the shipment — ridiculously over-packaged!  Must remember to add “please minimize/avoid plastic when packing.”)  While it’s frustrating knowing that these lids will also wear out, I’m happy to get more good use out of the glass.

2011 Year End Review — The Second Half

And now, for the rest of the story . . . .

Parting shot
I plan to eventually post the entire birth story here (or at least an abridged version, as it was quite the saga), but for now, you’ll have to accept bits and pieces, in no particular order.  The end is a decent place to start.

Under the knife
Two weeks ago today I underwent major surgery . . . for a tummy tuck and a boob job.  Okay, not exactly, but it kind of looks like it.   Here’s what really happened . . . .

Bicycle dreams
I continued processing the idea, and a few moments later, reality cut through the sleep-deprivation and Percocet-induced haze, and I thought to myself, “Self, you just had major abdominal surgery three days ago, I don’t really think you’ll be riding your bicycle anytime soon.”

A slow return to active transportation
Thursday, at six-and-a-half weeks post-op, I rode my bike for the first time since the surgery.  Those weeks of limited mobility gave me time to think about the limits of active transportation.

Psst, psst: The EC update
Reading about Elimination Communication (EC) midway through pregnancy activated my green radar — baby peeing and pooping in the toilet (or in a little potty or other receptacle) equals less dirty diapers to wash.  Less washing means less water and energy used — what wasn’t to love.  I read Diaper Free Baby by Christine Gross-Loh, and it all seemed pretty straight forward.  And then I had a baby . . . .

When baby’s away, Mama plays
My to-do list included picking up a fifty pound bag of whole wheat pastry flour from Local Harvest — not exactly something I could toss in the milk crate on the back of my bike.  I was resigned to driving the car for the 1-mile trip when I remembered . . . the new bike trailer!

Blue green mama
Yet, when my blues set in 2-3 weeks postpartum, my initial reaction was denial . . . . Gabriel’s smiles finally snapped me out of my denial.  He started smiling around nine weeks, this adorable little grin, yet I found myself so emotionally drained that I often couldn’t return those smiles, and that made me feel even worse.

Two’s company
My rationale going in was, sure, we’re adding an additional person, but a very small person, and we’re committed to minimizing stuff for that person, so it will be no big deal, right?  Not exactly.

To resist the spirit of consumerism and materialism

Baptism

All I want for Christmas
Would that be the two bottom teeth?  Or the two top teeth?  Either way, The Dude has it covered now.

Happy New Year!

Green Grinch musings

One of our basement storage spaces holds a small stockpile of Christmas-themed gift bags and tissue paper that I painstakingly smooth out and fold whenever we receive gifts.  While reusing these materials certainly qualifies as green, it also perpetuates the standard that gifts be wrapped (or bagged) in a disposable way.

If I don’t want to receive gifts in disposable wrapping, why would I continue to give gifts concealed in that manner, regardless of the used vs. new status of the gift bags and tissue paper?

Lying in bed last night, I solved my present-wrapping dilemma.  We have numerous receiving blankets (hand-me-downs, not new material) that are far too small to be useful for The Dude.  Sure, they have pastel colors and baby-themed prints on them instead of the traditional red and green, but the Green Grinch doesn’t really get hung up on little details like that.  The blankets will be the perfect size for most of my gifts, and with a few safety pins or bits of ribbon to secure them, I’ll be good to go!

In the spirit of a holiday with “more joy and less stuff,” check out these suggestions from The Center for a New American Dream.

Finally, a bit of food for thought, first a health-related article, then, an environment-related article (these are non-Christmas related, because I am, after all, the Green Grinch 😉 ).

From “Treating a Nation of Anxious Wimps” (follow link to read full article):

Yet the great secret of medicine is that almost everything we see will get better (or worse) no matter how we treat it. Usually better. The human body is exquisitely talented at healing.

The bottom line is that most [acute] conditions are self-limited . . . . Taking drugs for things that go away on their own is rarely helpful and often harmful.

From “Will nature always be the last book on the shelf?” (follow link to read full article):

Here were brand-new books on some of the most important challenges facing society today — now priced to move at about $2.50 — and they’d been left behind by the swarming scavengers, lingering on the shelves in the company of the odd, obscure, and obsolete.

It made real for me the now ubiquitous adage that conservation must strive to be more relevant to people.