Did I mention that he's 9 months old and occasionally wears a 2T?

I have had a week, peeps. As I mentioned, the hub hurt his back something fierce which meant
- no lifting
- no bending
- no standing
- no walking
which meant life at Chez Bebe was all mama, all the time. Being the sole provider of house managing/baby wrangling is a serious time suck. And little dude isn't even fully mobile!

At least the week has been interesting. We had our first injury, crazy sleep developments, a new tooth... I've also been on a baby food making kick which is surprisingly fulfilling. Clearly sista needs a hobby because the the fridge is CRAMMED with unmarked baby food jars filled with unrecognizable goo. Poor Matt, he has no idea what he's feeding the kid half the time. ("For lunch we're having green stuff and orange stuff and maybe some of this lumpy stuff.") It's ridiculous how proud I am when the boy likes something. He's like my personal Tom Colicchio. (They're both round and bald and opinionated.) If you have some time, do a search for baby food recipes. Crazytown. Granted, I pride myself on my ability to hit "puree" so I'm not exactly breaking ground but some people take it to whole. new. levels. (There are parents who braise.) Not to toot my own horn (toot!) I've managed to come up with some real winners this week. I realize that exactly two of you have babies near Babe's age, but this is the closest I've come to being creative in months so bear with me. Baby Boy's favorite breakfast concoction:

- plain organic whole milk yogurt (for fat)
- a scootch of baby cereal (for iron)
- Irish oats (for lumps)
- organic flax seed oil (for... something good)
- banana lumps (the kid likes lumps)
and the crucial ingredient:
- avocado chunks (it is a fruit!)

Sounds weird. SO GOOD. The avocado makes it a pretty color when you mush it and the banana works well with the avocado and the flax gives it a nutty flavor without the potential trip to the ER. Kid eats it for days. I pre-make it at night because ain't no way I'm messing with that many ingredients at 5 am.

Another top hit:

- Pumpkin/peach soup! (I can't take credit for this recipe, alas.) B is obsessed with pumpkins so I bought him a small one at the farmer's market. If I'd known they'd charge me $3 for it I would've made the kid wait but he kissed it and hugged it and called it George so when it went south it seemed a shame to just toss it:

- 1 c. diced pumpkin (use a small sugar pumpkin unless you're a glutton for punishment)
- 1/2 ripe peach (or a whole one, if you like things on the sweeter side. I totally cheated and used Trader Joe's canned, BTW. They pack it in white grape juice instead of syrup which allows me to pretend that it's healthier)
- 1/2 cup cooked brown rice (again, cheated with TJ's frozen version)
- chicken stock (see: peach/brown rice cheatation. Mama doesn't have time to raise chickens. She does, however, have time to talk in third person.)

Scrape out the innards and peel the rind (the labor intensive part, for whiners like me). If you like to roast the seeds, by all means do. I find it more trouble than it's worth, but that's me. Dice up the pumpkin flesh into teensy tiny pieces for faster cooking. Add the peach. Cover pumpkin and peach with stock and simmer for 20 minutes. Add the (already cooked!) brown rice and simmer an additional 10 minutes. Puree. It sounds gross but trust me, you could charge for this stuff. (It always elicits an appreciative "GOOB!" from the critic in the bib.)

Anybody else's kid refuse to self-feed? Now that sleep has settled down, feeding has hit the fray. Someone - NOT SAYING WHO - wants nothing, I mean nothing, to do with finger foods. Scratch that - he loves finger foods, he just feels that they are better served by the fingers of others. Place a sippy cup in front of him and Baby Napoleon will shriek at it a bit, then try to pick it up with his mouth. If you try to place the offending Cheerio/steamed carrot/sippy cup near his reach he'll recoil his hands like a prissy Frenchman. (No offense to prissy Frenchmen.) It's not like he can't pick it up - the kid has fantastic fine motor skills. Leave him be and he'll happily scoot around the apartment picking up every stay piece of cat litter and lint. And it's not that he doesn't want to eat it - he makes it quite clear that those delicious Cheerios belong in his mouth. (So clear. Soooo clear.) He also feeds himself with a spoon, sort of, with significant help from the sidelines - he just doesn't want to do the dirty work. He has fed himself a few times, but unfortunately my enthusiastic reaction to the chunk of banana he put into his mouth was so exciting he decided to put every piece of banana in his mouth, and it seems that stopping him from choking to death harshed his mellow because he hasn't tried it again since. Web advice veers from the sane (keep offering it, eventually he'll want to do it himself and you'll rue the day you ever wished for self-feeding) to the less sane (strip him naked and let him fingerpaint himself with his food! Hey, why don't you get naked too?) to the ridiculous (if he won't feed himself, refuse to feed him! If he's hungry enough he'll eat, by god. Babies just do this to control you). I've never met a 10-year-old who couldn't feed himself so I'm assuming that he'll sort this all out but if anybody has any advice, aside from stripping and starving, I'm all ears. (We've also hit the "drop food on the floor and see what mama does" phase. I was so hoping we'd skip that one.)

So you want to hear the latest on sleep? Prepare yourself. This morning I woke up and the sun was almost up. I looked at the time:

6:45 am

I peeked my head into his room (had he perished in the night?) but there he was - head resting on the crib bumper, legs propped against the side, blankie in his mouth, staring contentedly out the window. I have no idea how long he'd been awake or why he'd been so quiet, but I know I liked it. I'll let you know tomorrow if it was a fluke. Speaking of tomorrow, I need to hit the hay. I have a callback for a commercial spot with Tim Gunn. Carry on, Ali! Carry on!