Making Ruthie's Food

In keeping with my frugal tendencies, I am making all of Ruthie's food. So far, she's just had bananas, rice cereal (which I'm not making, thankyouverymuch - that stuff is cheap!) and avocados, which don't require any cooking. But another new mom and I are each making big batches of different fruits and vegetables and then swapping them. So far, I have cooked and then pureed huge quantities of plums, apricots, peas, and zucchini (from our garden!), and have gotten from my friend pears, carrots and yams. I literally have a month's worth of food in my freezer in the garage (oh, by the way, we got a small freezer in the garage - I really feel like a grown up now!). It's great, having this food co-op, and since I like cooking, I don't mind making the food. Ruthie's not a big fan of the food processor, but she's a big help in the Bjorn while I'm doing it. =)

 Anyway, here is a HUGE batch of peas, which I froze in two ice cube trays.

Since I still had peas left over, I then froze two portions worth (for when she's bigger) in Dixie cups and put those in the freezer too. So handy!

After the peas, our house really stank, but hopefully she'll love peas and eat them right up.

Life with Ruthie

Not too much new to report, except that Ruthie continues to be the happiest baby on earth. Well, that's what we think, at least.

She is especially happy when standing - we try not to encourage it, as we want her to master crawling first (and I don't feel like spending the next three months bent in half while she holds my fingers and walks around the room), but we can't really stop her from pulling herself up, which she does all the time.

Just last week, she pulled herself up for the first time on our coffee table, and promptly began "reading" all our books up there. Man, we're in for it with this girl. She is BUSY!

But look at this face - how can we be anything but delighted with her?

It's All Just Part of the Magic

On Wednesday, we had our final hurrah at Disneyland, before our pass is blocked out for the summer. We had to wait for Ian to come home from school (he's been in "staff development" for the past 7 days but tomorrow is his first official day of summer!) and Ruthie to wake up from her nap, but when she did, we hit the road for the Magic Kingdom. We invited my parents and had such a great time, riding a few rides, eating dinner at the Hungry Bear and walking around the Happiest Place on Earth.

But early in our trip, we had a slight hiccup. Ian was carrying Ruthie in the Bjorn and I had put on her little Robeez, these awesome tiny leather shoes my mom bought for her at Nordstrom. They are da-har-ling on her. =) Ian asked me if I thought they would stay on and I assured him that they would. Fast forward less than ten minutes, as we're just about to approach Pirates of the Caribbean, and Ian says, "Ruthie only has one shoe on." Okay, ten points to Daddy for being right. So all four of us retrace all our steps, hoping to find a tiny white shoe. Alas, no luck.

On the way out, in a vain hope, we go to the Lost and Found, where they tell us they haven't seen it yet, but we could fill out a form and they would let us know if they find it. We were both pretty sure it was a waste of time, but we filled the sheet out and left our address.

And guess what came in the mail yesterday? Yep, a tiny white shoe. Can you believe it? Now that is customer service. Even though we were irresponsible and left our belongings there, they go through the trouble to match it up with the owner and mail it back to you on THEIR dime. Very impressive.

Don't you just love Disneyland? We will miss you, oh land of churros, rides, music and customer service. Until September...

Frugal Challenge Update

As I first talked about here and then updated here, I am deep in the throws of a frugal challenge: Use all my existing hair products up before buying anything new. In the original post, dated July 11, 2011, I guessed that given my current stash, I could make it until at least October before making any new purchases. And then my friend Chanda gave me a ton of products that she tried that didn't work with her hair, and in the follow up post, I guessed that it might be more like March or April of 2012.

Well, it's almost July and I am going strong. Sure, I don't "do" my hair as often since I'm home now with Ruthie, but this challenge has really opened my eyes to how much product I actually had and had easy it was for me to just pick up something interesting in the beauty aisle. I mean, seriously? A year? I can't believe how long all these bottles that were 1/3 full have lasted. What if I had kept buying? I shudder to think. It's been a very good experience for me, this frugal challenge, and I am excited to see in what other ways I might be able to save. Any ideas?

Life with Ruthie

Ruthie is very busy these days. She has one small toy bin in our family room and she is very fond of digging through it for her favorite toys. You can see her avid interest in this photo. I love how she has it tipped toward her.

She is also very fond of pushing herself up on anyone or anything that is still enough for her to do so. She is very proud of her standing - especially her one handed trick!

She continues to be an amazing baby and we are so thankful. It's hard to believe she's been a part of our family for 6 months. But it's also impossible to imagine life without her.

I am already happily brainstorming her 1st birthday - stay tuned!

Father's Day

We had so much fun celebrating Ian's first Father's Day! We'd had a busy weekend, so he wanted to be low key. We went to church and then had snacks for lunch, Ian's favorite meal. I went to Trader Joe's and got all his favorite things.

We all enjoyed the picinic in our backyard!

Then we watched a movie (one of Ian's favorite afternoon activities) while Ruthie took a nap. After her nap, we opened presents.

Ruthie and Ian really enjoyed each other's company!

After presents, we met up with Mary and Mike at the park for some Frisbee golf and bochee. We had a super fun time with them at the park and their kids entertained Ruthie very well!

When we were finished at the park, we went to Buono's, a local pizza place by our house. After thoroughly enjoying that, we headed home to put our Bugaboo to bed and enjoy a quiet evening in. It was such a wonderful time, celebrating my amazing husband who is now an amazing father!

Bananas!

Since Ruthie is turning 6 months tomorrow, we decided it was time for her first solids. Truthfully, she's been ready for a while - eyeing our food, grabbing our forks, fussing at the dinner table because everyone is eating and she's not, etc. But I have so been enjoying nursing (and it's so easy - no prep, no clean up, no packing!) that I didn't want to cut in on that sweet time. But, it was time and we were actually really looking forward to the first meal.

It worked out great, too. It was Father's Day, so it seemed fitting to have Ian give her her first taste of solid foods, while I recorded it and took photos.

Ruthie started her adventure in the wonderful world of food with bananas, very ripe and very mashed.

Looked pretty gross to us but she seemed to really enjoy it! 

Here she is, getting ready with her bib.

She wanted to "help" with the spoon process, but Ian did a great job holding her hands down and getting the food in there at the same time.

As you can see, she's quite enjoying it!

I think she mostly just liked all the attention and praise she was getting. =)

And now we are on day two of the solids, and she is doing great. In fact, she's 2 1/2 hours in to her morning nap, something she hasn't done in several weeks, so I'm a BIG fan of the bananas.