Life with the Dokulils: recipes

Friday, May 27, 2011

Yellow Mellow

Remember when???
The Loves of my Life

OUT OF THE KICHEN: The other day, Andy noticed that Adam was always reaching for his yellow toys. So, while in the bath tonight, we put a yellow ducky next to other colored toys and every time he reached for the yellow ducky!

How cool that his daddy noticed this!

In other Adam news - he started army crawling today. He can stand while holding on to me or the furniture. He can pull himself up in his crib. He can walk while holding on to my pants or my hands. He rolls all over the place and boy is he FAST!

He's eating cheese now and uses his pinchers to grasp it. So adorable!

We've been having a blast hanging out with friends and enjoying the wonderful weather. Andy has taken to gardening like a pro and I even planted a couple planters this year. Ugh. Dirt. We've also hired nanny one day a week to allow mommy and daddy to go on a date night. I try not to bombard her with phone calls and texts... :-) She's doing great and it also helps that our neighbor, a police officer, keeps an eye out for us.

I can't believe its the end of May already! My baby brother will be turning 25 tomorrow. Wow! I thought I was 25! I sure miss him but I know he's happy and having the time of his life out in CA.

Time just flies. Our summer calendar is already filling up! With a trip to Estes Park followed by a trip to Canada, we're a busy bunch! We're lucky to have such wonderful friends and family housesitting and pet sitting while we're away. I'm so looking forward to seeing my family and taking on Adam on our first family vacation!

I just LOVE LOVE LOVE being a mom. I really hope that God's plans are for me to have more children. This family is my passion. I can't imagine doing anything else.

IN THE KITCHEN:

Adam's palette is growing! We've steamed and baked sweet potatoes, steamed green beans, pears, and peaches. He also eats baked chicken thighs, whole milk yogurt, mild cheddar cheese crumbles, banana, and avocado. I'm eating just about everything now except obvious soy and peanuts. I'm cautious with the other nuts - but so far so good!

Recipe of the day - Chicken Parmesan. I made it tonight with spinach linguine. It was delicious! If you'd like the recipe - email me directly!

That's all for now! I promise the next post will have more pictures!

Thursday, November 25, 2010

I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaack!

Hello World! I can't believe its been 3 months since Adam was born. I feel like I opened my eyes and its Christmas time already. A lot has happened! Let me catch you up.

Adam was born Cesarean because as his father put it, "Buddy, you slept right through the part where you were supposed to turn!" He was a breech baby. The delivery was piece of cake and I definitely don't feel like I have missed out on anything by getting to skip the major labor part!

The doctor pulled him out one butt cheek at a time and finally held him up to me so I could see whose head had been banging against my ribs for so long. Such a beautiful guy! He wailed, we cried, and life as a trio began.

Adam lost weight very quickly (as many babies do) and we were forced to start supplementing with formula in addition to nursing and also pumping. This is known as triple feeding. And it blows. Big. Time. We fed Adam every two hours whether he wanted to eat or not using this method for 3 weeks until he finally got back to birth weight. It took about an hour to complete the feeding process, then change a diaper, wash the bottles and back to bed. The alarm would go off about 45 minutes later and the process would repeat itself. My mom came and stayed a week to help us out. She did all the laundry, put clothes away, cooked us all 3 meals a day, got up in the middle of the night, cleaned. She was amazing and I bawled when dad showed up at the end of the week to pick up mom who was standing in the driveway with her suitcase and her thumb sticking out. I think I even heard the tires peel as they drove off into the sunset together. (Ok - that's not REALLY how it happened - but it's close!)

Finally we were on the right track! A growing, VERY happy baby! A growing, VERY happy baby who couldn't for the life of him keep much down. For several weeks, Andy and I struggled to get him to retain anything! We never left the house without 12 or so bibs and a couple changes of clothes and extra blankets. His diapers were always suspect and he had this rough patch of skin on his cheeks, legs, and arms.

I knew that something wasn't adding up and made sure he was weighed weekly if not more often so I could track his growth. And sure enough, he started to slow down in his weight gain. A typical baby should gain between 4 and 7 ounces a week. During October, Adam was lucky to gain 1 to 3 ounces a week. Back to the doctor we went where Adam was diagnosed with MSPI (Milk Soy Protein Intollerance) and excessive reflux. We were told to start the triple feeding again, given a prescription for Zantac, and I cut out all dairy and soy products from my diet.

That's pretty tricky. There's a lot of weird words that mean milk or soy. So label reading has been important. Eating out is the most difficult because its hard to trust what's in the food.

He is getting better. However we do occasionally have days where projectile spit up, awful diapers, and ezcema reappears. When that happens, I look at my food journal for patterns and that's how we've come to realize he is also sensitive to peanuts, pecans, avocados, and possibly citrus.

He's getting so big!

Besides the diet drama, this is one awesome kid. He sleeps all night now, and actually needs to be roused to eat. He is the most unfussy baby I have ever met. He chatters a lot. Smiles constantly. Giggles. He adores his daddy. (And his mommy.) He's working on sitting up too. After 3 months of nursing, we almost have the hang of it. I'm one proud mom!

Here's my favorite photo of last week: