Picnic at the Park

Tonight Dawson got to accompany daddy and mommy on a date-- Picnic in the Park!  Really our dates now a days are centered around Dawson (unless we do a stay at home date once he is asleep), but we like it this way :)  Here are a few pictures from the evening!

My first picnic!!

First time to eat outside :)

Good picture of our view!  It was a beautiful evening!

 

I love sitting with my daddy!  He is the coolest!

Enjoying a walk!  You can tell by my little smirk :)

Happy baby (and mommy)!

Yep, we love each other :)

"Do you guys see that over there?  That is silly!"

Starting to get a little sleepy.

Getting dipped in the water!

As you can tell, we had a wonderful evening!  We love picnics and family time :)

Baby food made simple!

Since I am home all the time, I thought it would be fun to start making my own baby food!  So far I have made Dawson applesauce, pear sauce, peaches, butternut squash, peas, green beans, sweet potatoes, avocados, and cantaloupe (I think I got them all!  I guess you could count bananas too, but I just mashed those, so I don't think it counts!).  Below I explain  what I did to prepare each food.  It was super easy and just took a little bit of time :)

Note:  I pureed all the food with a food processor.  To thin the food, I just added water while pureeing until it reached my desired consistency for Dawson!  I then froze all my baby food in Tovolo ice cube trays (perfect one ounce portions).  Once frozen, I transferred them to a labeled ziplock bag and stuck them in the freezer!  I normally then pull out what Dawson will eat the next day and stick it in the fridge to thaw :)  P.S.  When writing up this blog post I realized that I say the word "dethaw" which is NOT a word!  Wow...embarassing!  How long have I been doing that?!?!  "Dethaw" totally doesn't make any sense!  I don't know where I picked that up...whoops! 

Applesauce and Pear Sauce (Just click and it will take you to the recipe!  There is also a link to a webpage with some great baby food making tips on this page.)

Peaches--  Aldi was having a sale on peaches the other day.  They were 25 cents a piece, so I stocked up :)  Peaches are really simple to make.  I brought them home and let them ripen some more.  Once they were really soft, I skinned and pitted the peaches.  Then I cut them into big hunks and threw them in a food processor with a little water. 

 Butternut Squash-- We have a lot of this in our garden, thanks to our neighbor, and Dawson loves squash, so I figured this would be fun to make!  To make, first you cut the squash in half and scoop out the seeds.

Then place the halves face down in a pan and cover with about an inch of water.

Bake at 400 degrees for 40 minutes-1 hour (or until the "shell/skin" puckers and the halves feel soft).
Scoop the squash "meat" out of the shell and place into a food processor.  Add water as necessary to achieve a smooth consistency.

Peas/Green beans--  I did these the exact same way, so I will just give you one set of directions.  I bought these frozen (figured it would be easier this way).  First you have to cook the peas/green beans in a pot in a little bit of water (just follow the directions on the package).

Once cooked, put the peas/beans in your food processor.  If there is water left in the pot that you cooked the veggie in, use that water to help puree the food until it is the consistency that you want.  Super. Simple!

Sweet Potatoes--  Wash and poke holes in the sweet potatoes with a fork.  Then wrap sweet potatoes in tin foil (do not peel).  Place in a 400 degree oven and bake for 45 min.- 1 hr. or until soft.  Remove skins by slitting the sweet potato lengthwise.  Then scoop out the "meat". Then puree with some water.  

Avocados--  Aldi was having a sale on avocados this last week for 29 cents a piece, so I stocked up on A LOT of them!! (Such an amazing deal!  I love Aldi, if you couldn't already tell that from my blog!)  They freeze really well when sliced into chunks, so I cut them into small portion sizes for Dawson and stuck them in the freezer!  Avocados are super easy to mash, so no need to puree them, just mash them up with a fork!  Lately I have been mixing avocado with my homemade applesauce and Dawson LOVES it!

Cantaloupe--  Aldi had these on sale for 99 cents, so I stocked up on these as well.  Cantaloupe also freeze best in chunks (or so I hear), so I cut them into pieces and froze them.  Cantaloupe is easily mashed, so I just thaw and mash it when needed :)

Our Baby :)

Here is a quick update of Dawson in the last few days.  Just some pictures of things he has done :) 

Just being silly :)

Eating my sock, again!

Brushing my "tooth" for the first time!

Hanging out with my Auntie Ky on her 19th birthday!  Love you Auntie Ky :)

My friend Clair came to play!  We got to go on a walk in a double stroller!

Clair and I getting ready to read some books :)

A friend to play with!

Dawson was excited to have his friend Eli hang out with us today!!  I am going to be watching Eli for a bit until his mommy can find permanent daycare here in Manhattan :)  (If you know of any good places, let us know!)  Eli just turned 1 and Dawson is 7 months, so I guess you could say  that my hands are going to be busy for a while! The boys had a good day with lots of playing!  Eli, we are glad you can hang out with us!  We love you already!

7 Months!

I can't believe that today is my little boy's 7 month birthday!  Time truly has flown :)

Here is what Dawson has been up to in the past month:

• Can sit up really well on his own 
• Started eating solid food and LOVES it
• Growls when he is mad, or just for fun :)  
• Loves to snort and make silly noises 
• Enjoys pat-a-cake and peek-a-boo
• Reaches and grabs for everything all the time
• Got his first tooth
• Can say things like "ba" and "ga"
• Loves playing with his toys
• Can drink from a big boy cup
• Holds a crawling stance if we place him in it
• Raises up his arms when we go to pick him up
• Gets really excited when daddy gets home from work :)
• Very observant and curious
• Sleeps around 11 hours straight every night
• Takes 3 naps during the day 

Those are just a few things he is up to right now!  I am sure I am forgetting some of them :)  We weighed and measured him this morning and he is 18 lbs. 4 oz and 28 inches long!

This month was a little harder to get his picture by the bear...he kept attacking it!

Look at those beautiful blue eyes :)

 To celebrate Dawson got to go to the little Manhattan zoo with his buddy Clark!

Happy 7 Month Birthday baby!  Mommy and Daddy love you :)

Such a big boy!

My little boy is growing up! Look at how he can drink from a big boy cup! He does pretty well with this, but kind of laps up the water like a puppy dog :)  He is too precious!  Dawson loves his water!

Here he is in a crawling stance...but he didn't get there on his own.  I like to set him down like this.  He will stay that way for a while and then drops!  I guess he will crawl when he is ready!

Free homemade baby food!

A few days ago I embarked on a two day journey of making LOTS of FREE homemade baby food!  We have a pear tree and an apple tree in our back yard, so I decided that I needed to make some applesauce and pear sauce for Dawson!  It wasn't hard to do, but took a while to prepare :)  Totally worth it though!  Here is what I did if you are interested in trying it yourself!  If you live around the Manhattan area and want to make some applesauce, our tree still has some apples you are welcome to have!

So to begin we had to pick our apples and pears!  As I was researching about pears I learned something new, they are one of the few fruits that will not ripen while on the tree.  Therefore, once I had picked the pears, I wanted to speed up the ripening process, so I did some more research and learned something else!  A way to speed up the ripening process is to stick the pears in a brown paper bag with a ripening banana. So I tried this and it seemed to help!  Here are our apples and pears!  There are LOTS!

All you have to do once the fruit is picked (and ripened) is core, peel, and chop it into cubes.  Stick it in a crockpot for around 3-4 hours with 1-2 cups of water.  A crock pot FULL of apples took about two cups of water.  The crock pot of pears wasn't all the way full, but close, and took about 1 cup of water.  I guess pears are juicier than apples are!  (Note: I realize that when pears are all the way ripe, they are very soft and wouldn't need to be cooked down.  You could just mash them up for baby without cooking.  However, pears have a very gritty texture and the cooking process makes the texture much smoother!  Plus, I didn't have time to wait for my pears to get really ripe, so cooking them worked best for me!)  I had 2 crock pots of apples and 1 of pears!

When the fruit begins to mash when you stir it, then it is done.  It will look like this once stirred.

I then took the fruit out of the crock pot and put it in a food processor to make the texture smooth. Here is a picture of the finished product.

Now it is time to freeze the sauce.  This is where you can spend a little bit of money if you want, or you can just use ice trays that you already have.  I had borrowed some ice cube trays from a friend that allow you to easily pop out individual cubes of food.  I then bought some Tovolo ice cube trays (pictured on the right) which also allows for easy removal.  I like the Tovolo trays because they freeze perfect 1 ounce cubes.  I also froze some food in regular ice cube trays, which worked just fine, but the food was much harder to remove.  Here are what the trays that I used looked like:

Once you find a tray that works well for you, all you have to do is fill the trays and level off the tops like so:

Then cover this in plastic wrap and freeze!  Once frozen, pop out the cubes and stick them in a freezer bag.  Label the bag with the food name and date you made it. Then store this in the freezer.  When you are ready for some food, just thaw a few cubes!  There you have it, cheap, easy, organic, FREE baby food! If you are just starting to make your own baby food and have questions, here is a good blog that is very helpful- http://styleberryblog.com/creating-a-new-normal-efficient-homemade-baby-food