Finicky Eater

    Froggie has become pretty opinionated when it comes to her food. Not as much what it is she's eating, but how she's eating it. She has become VERY independent in her eating and sometimes refuses to be fed things like her breakfast (oatmeal with fruit). One day last week she was determined to not eat anything off the spoon I was holding.
     As silly as it sounds her refusal seemed to be more about who was holding the spoon and not being fed. So Big Brother offered to feed her; and she ate all of it!

Big Brother feeding Froggie her breakfast.

Staying Cool in September

     Well we never did lose power last night though the number of people without power increased after I posted yesterday. It was hot again today and I was happy to beat the heat in any way possible.

     I decided to load up our water table and take it to work so that the kids could play and cool off before lunch. It was a hit but I wish we had a bigger water table so that there was less fighting over the toys and water. Regardless, everyone got the chance to cool down. Work in and of it self is nice and cool which keeps teachers and kids happy. This isn't always the case, some of the local schools have had to result to ice packs and fans  and even evacuating early due to the heat! 

     When Froggie and I left work/school (Big Brother was still asleep so Hubby picked him up when he got out of work) we headed out to do a little shopping. By shopping I mean we wandered around and looked at potential birthday present options for a party we will be going to in a few weeks. It was nice to be in the air conditioning and we came up with some pretty awesome ideas. 

     In an effort to avoid the heat as long as possible we headed to Cracker Barrel for dinner. In the past 6 1/2 months eating out has been fairly easy; we put Big Brother in a booster seat or high chair and took Froggie into wherever we were in her carrier. Now that we've transitioned out of the carrier it's a little more difficult. 

     We went in today and had our little table with a booster seat on one side and a high chair on the other. Froggie and Big Brother did great! Since it was an impromptu dinner out I didn't have Froggie's dinner with me so I ordered an extra side (baked sweet potato) and let Froggie eat away. I fed her a few bites because I did have a baby spoon in our bag but then I wasn't really able to eat my dinner. We had an extra roll plate so I put some sweet potatoes and some of my green beans on it and gave it to her. She did a great job feeding herself.  She ate A LOT tonight and was very proud of herself!

    Well, we're still trying to beat the heat and the best way to do that is to sleep through it - g'night!

Sitting like a big girl!

Mmmm cornbread!

Big Girl! Sweet potato and green beans.

Sweet potato and green beans were a hit!

She did such a good job

Mmmmm sweet potato!

Making "Puffs"

     I decided to be brave and try my hand at making puffs. (I feel like I should mention the last time I tried making baby snacks they didn't turn out well at all) So I checked out a bunch of posts online and decided on the recipe that required the fewest ingredients. This recipe also didn't require sugar while most of the others did (and if you look at the ingredient list on puffs there's sugar in those too).
     So I'm using the recipe from The Happy Lil' Homemaker which calls for Rice cereal (2 cups), pureed baby food (2 table spoons) and water (1/4 cup). I chose to use a fun flavor and picked Apples and Cherries.

     As I started working on my concoction I quickly realized that there was not nearly enough liquid to mix everything together. I ended up doubling the water and using an entire jar of baby food. 

     This made a pretty nice dough and I decided to attempt to spread my dough out on my wax paper lined cookie sheet and then take a pizza cutter to it. The dough was pretty sticky and a lot of it collected on the cookie cutter so I'll have to see how it actually worked when they came out of the oven. (If you have the time or tools to do tiny dots of dough do it! I'm sure it'll save you the work of trying to cut everything apart once it comes out of the oven but I'm impatient.)

     Well, here's the bad news... my "puffs" didn't turn out. After 40 minutes in the oven the top was baked but the inside looked a little like oatmeal still and EVERYTHING was stuck to the wax paper. In retrospect I suppose you have to follow the directions exactly to know if it's going to work and I may try it again in the future (or a different recipe). Honestly though, I didn't think these were very flavorful. Good for a baby who doesn't have a real understanding of flavor maybe but I don't think Big Brother would have been happy with these.