House of a thousand silly hats

Fabric shopping is a wee bit boring for the sprog. Papa stepped in to entertain him... & the staff at the cutting table.

No Poo Update

It's been over seven weeks now since I last used shampoo. Most of that time, I was washing my hair with baking soda in water about twice a week. I tried to gradually increase the time between washes, while rinsing my hair with just water in between. It seemed like my hair was getting oily just as quickly as it did with shampoo & I was starting to question my commitment to no poo.

So I decided to try a rinse with diluted apple cider vinegar. Not sure that did much. The next day I tried to just massage my scalp & rinse really well in the shower. Then I blowdried my hair & the results were great: shiny, bouncy hair that looked just like it did back in the shampoo days!

After trying it a couple of times, it seems my hair gets shinier when I blow it dry. Letting it air dry is what I usually do, but I might try to fit blowdrying into my routine now...
One thing that's a bit different about my hair with no poo is how I can feel the oil in it. Kind of like how my hair felt on the rare occasions that I used conditioner in the past. It isn't smelly, lanky or greasy--I don't think anyone would see me on the street & say, "That gal ain't washed her hair in ages... ew!"--but I do feel a bit of oil left on my hands when I run them through it. Similar to what I get from rubbing my face. 

I think I'll stick with this no poo thing.

Market Day

The trailer is wiiiiide as a stroller, but handles really smoothly

Trout Lake Farmers Market was BUSY

First, we bought a fly catcher

Second stop: CREPES. A few other people had the same idea

There were lots of little children, including this 'flower child'

We looked at some bees

I don't like to eat eggplants, but I love how they look

Sprout likes Hungarian sweet peppers

The Family Vehicle

This afternoon we bought the MEC double bike trailer. We got a good deal on one that had been returned (I suspect because it's so damn wide!) & bought the stroller kit. Since the trailer was already assembled, we just popped the wheel & handle on, then walked it home.

As soon as we'd eaten dinner, I put the trailer mount onto the rear axle of my bike. Then I clipped Sprout into his helmet & strapped him into the rig with a few toys in case he got bored. He fussed at being seat belted in, just like he does every time we put him in the stroller, but quieted down almost immediately. Hooking up the trailer was simple, then away we went!

We rode up Saint George, a bike route on one side of our block & headed up the quiet streets to the south of us. The trailer rides very smoothly & I didn't really notice any difference in how my bike handles. Cornering & going over speed humps is no problem at all.

The whole ride, Sprout stared out the side window, watching the world go by & it wasn't until we were almost home again that I realized he never gets to see that much, so fast (I was probably going a thrilling 10-20km/h). In the stroller, he faces us & the canopy is always raised around him, so he has a narrow view of everything. In the rare occasions when he's in a car, his car seat faces the back: his view is mostly upholstery & a bit of sky out the window.

I can't wait to ride to the farmers' market at Trout Lake tomorrow. We've got the bikes all set & ready to go in the garage. I'm looking forward to the ride, getting a pitcher plant, picking up some starts for the garden & most of all: crepes!

Wordless Wednesday

Top-up

We are still giving Sprout a little formula every night after he breastfeeds, before he goes to bed. I pump each night before I go to sleep, usually getting a couple ounces. We add one scoop worth of formula (70mL) to my milk & that goes into a bottle for him. I can't believe we're almost finished with the formula top-ups now. We've gradually cut back since he started solids, making sure he was gaining weight well. I think we might be able to drop the formula entirely soon, as this little guy is a champion eater.
Eight months ago, I wasn't sure if I was going to ever get anywhere near producing enough milk for him. We were offering him formula EVERY feeding, some days he likely drank only about half breast milk. I was pumping at least six times a day after feedings as well. Every feeding took a lot of time & effort. So many times I wondered if it was worth the hassle & thought about how much easier my life would be if I gave up breastfeeding & switched to formula. I set a goal to breastfeed until he was three months old.
Then we reached three months & I was still supplementing, trying to cut back on the formula to stimulate my milk production. After a few months of weekly weigh-ins & much stress, I settled at producing about 80% of his milk needs.
It's been a long & winding road, but I'm glad I stuck with breastfeeding. Despite all the pain of cracked nipples, bad latches, thrush, poorly fitting pump shield & bites, I love it. The closeness, the calming effect, the health benefits for both of us, the price... These days my breastfeeding goal is to go as long as Sprout wants to. Given that he' still feeding about five times a day, I think we'll be doing this for another year or so. :)

Linnaeus 9.2

Sprout's teeth are coming fast & furious now, tooth #6 popped through Sunday night, after a few major drooling & gnawing episodes. He's used to his nightly tooth brushing now & opens his mouth to let me do it. He's also started sticking his tongue out of his mouth & feeling the top teeth all the time. The two upper central incisors are starting to come down enough that they show when he smiles, so he's starting to look less like a jack-o-lantern. They're also coming in enough that I feel them nearly every time he breastfeeds. Sometimes I end up with two tooth imprints in my nipple at the end of the feed.

My half-assed (pun intended) attempts at EC are going fairly well, when I bother. He hasn't been pooping in the middle of breakfast lately, so we managed to get one in the toilet Sunday. It's not something I do when we're away from home, but if I'm at home & he's obviously about to go, why not get it in the toilet straight from the source, rather than having to get it off his bum & the diaper?

What hasn't gone well is the new toilet seat we bought. It's a great idea: a smaller toilet seat nests inside the lid, attached by a magnet, so you can just flip it down, rather than having to use a separate potty seat thingie on there. But we haven't been able to get our old seat off. The bolts attaching it to the toilet are metal & completely rusted. The plastic nut will not budge & we've been unable to even cut it off. I think the only way to do it would be to go at it with a dremel, which we don't have.

Sprout is still poking everything in sight. If he drips a bit of food on his tray, he'll poke that. He pokes the buttons on his music-playing toys, as well as buttons on clothing. He pokes my little star tattoo whenever he can see it. If he notices a mole on my arm, he'll poke that.

Sprout has started to really move around a lot in our arms & when he's on his own. Sprout makes me realize how many things we, as adults, do during the day that we had to learn once. For example, moving your head & body to look at something. He leans over so he can see around things when in our arms or sitting elsewhere. He's gradually starting to realize that he can actually go places by rolling. Once in a while when he's on his tummy, he pushes himself backwards on the floor. He also lunges out of our arms when we're sitting on the couch/floor. No crawling yet. Most of the time he doesn't move more than a metre in ten minutes, so I can still leave him on the floor & leave the room for a moment. I'm trying to enjoy that while it lasts...

Diaper changes & face cleaning after meals is becoming difficult as he gets more mobile. He twists around on the change pad & shimmies upward so his head's on the dresser top. I still haven't figured out why there's a 'seat belt' attached to most change pads. If I relied on that to hold him, it would mean he'd just twist around with the pad on top of him, since it's not fixed to the top of his dresser. What's the point of that?

Here's a little video to show you where he's at with mobility.

New Hat

It's finally summer & time for a sun hat. Got a 12-18 month size for little Mr. Big Noggin. So glad he had an *average* sized head at birth at least, since he doesn't now.

After about two minutes of struggling with it, he gave in. Chin strap: 1, baby: 0.

Linnaeus 9.1

Sprout now weighs exactly 19 pounds (8.6 kg) & seems to be staying around the 40th percentile for weight. In the past, he was more of a 15th percentile skinny-baby. As long as he's following that line on the growth chart or skipping up a percentile, rather than dropping into a lower one, I don't care where he's at. On a related note, people keep commenting on how tall he is, or guessing his age to be 6-9 months older than he actually is. He's always been above average in height, sitting at the 75th percentile at the moment. If he keeps growing like he is, he might end up taller than his Auntie Sarah (she's a hair under six feet).

Still no crawling yet, but he's sticking his bum up in the air a bit sometimes & is perfecting his belly-spinner routine. I am definitely happy that he isn't precocious in this regard. I see other mamas chasing their lightning-fast babies around & despite the extra calorie-burn they're probably getting, I'm not jealous.

Tooth #5 popped through Monday after much drooling & gnawing. He keeps chomping cloth things like his sleeves, socks & blankets, then pulling them out between his clenched teeth. So now he's got upper & lower central incisors, plus one lateral incisor. Which, according to a chart I got from the dental presentation at the baby group, is exactly the usual order. He's on the early end of the age ranges given, though.

Sprout has really started to enjoy books. He points to things in the pictures on each page & loves the sound effects I make when reading Farm. When nursing him before bed he kicks up a fuss if he sees a book on the table beside the 'mimi chair' & won't quiet down until I read it to him. I hope to continue reading books to him before bed for a long time. :)

Sprout's fine motor control continues to improve. He can now easily pick up small, slippery bits of fruit & get them into his mouth almost all the time. He ate an entire pear cut into pieces of various sizes Monday.

He's also gotten fairly adept at pulling apart the pieces of his play mat, then gnawing the hell out of them. I love the design of it, the colours & shapes are great, but the fact that it's made up of so many small pieces makes it more of a toy than just flooring. I recently heard that there are higher-than-advisable levels of formamides in some foam play mats, prompting a total recall on them in several European countries. After a little web research, I discovered that Skip Hop says their mats "...received the lowest possible score,<2ug/m3 (less than 2 millionths of a gram per cubic meter) for Formamide emissions, the lowest measurable result with this testing method.  These tests show that – within the limits of the test – its presence is essentially not detectable." So I'm not going to pack it up & chuck it just yet. I would like to come up with a solution that prevents Sprout from disassembling it daily, though...

Market Weekend

Baby's first lettuce--he ate it, but wasn't terribly impressed

This weekend was the first Trout Lake Farmers' Market of the year, so we packed Sprout into the shopping cart, er, stroller & headed eastward. It's only a 20-minute walk from our house, though we rarely go there, almost always heading points westward, for some reason.

It was nice to remind myself that this is the best way to shop--meet the producers of the food you're buying, listen to live music, all the while munching on buckwheat crepes & drinking organic apple juice. La Boheme Creperie was the main reason I went, honestly. I had 'la Quebecoise', which was a buckwheat crepe stuffed with cheese, apples, ham & maple syrup. Oli's crepe with fig jam was pretty tasty too.

bowl o' chocolate, coffee & a flatbread pizza (the Alsatian)

We didn't buy too much stuff: red leaf lettuce, rhubarb, cilantro & some pole beans to plant. It was more of a reconnaissance mission: next week we'll buy some tomato plants, possibly a teeny spruce or two, maybe some lavender plants, some kind of carnivorous plant (either a venus fly trap or a pitcher plant) & probably some other veggie starts for our garden.

Sprout & Papa contemplate the grocery offerings

Today we walked up to Marché St. George, which is just 12 blocks due South of us. Today's cabin fever precipitated the outing, despite the soggy weather. It's a stylish little cafe/grocery store with carefully curated, mostly local products like Birchwood Dairy ice cream, Gone Crackers, & D-Original Sausage. Marché St. George opened about six months ago & I've been meaning to go there for a while.

Their groceries are higher-end with prices to match, but hot drinks & snacks are comparable to most cafes around here. The hot chocolate I had was creamy & lovely, $3.50 for a large, served French style, in a small bowl. Next time I'd like to try the flatbread that our table-mate was eating. We shared one of the two tables inside (not a place for large groups...) with Fred, a former barber. He noticed how much hair Sprout had & struck up a conversation.

While we were drinking & chatting, a photographer was carefully documenting the shop, which we later found out was for a magazine article. Apparently, the little shop has already attracted several journalists & spawned a number of newspaper & magazine articles. & rightfully so--it's a charming place. If you're in the neighbourhood of East 28th Avenue & Saint George, you should defnitely stop by Marché St. George.

Wordless Wednesday

Linnaeus 9.0

I can haz sammich?

New things this week:

First bread: we're still waiting on the wheat, but I picked up dense little loaf of spelt bread from European Breads Bakery on my way home from Stroller Bootcamp yesterday. The look of concentration on his face as he tried this new texture was hilarious. He ate two pieces, or really, ate about one & played with the rest until it was only fit for the birds...

Today he gleefully ate one piece of toast with cream cheese. He refused to touch the second one until I gave him some of the mango I was slicing. If he sees me holding any of his favourite foods without giving him some, he pitches a fit. The fruit sitting in the bowl on the table is fine, but if I'm holding it, eating it or slicing it up, he will protest until given some.

I love that he's now made the connection between the pear-shaped black thing & the light green, fatty chunks of slippery food he loves, or the round red & green thing & the sweet, juicy yellow cubes.

Learning to use a straw cup! Yay for independent drinking! Since he started solid foods, I've been giving him sips of water from a regular cup & he's gotten better at that, but I still have to hold it for him & he spits half of it out, or even better, rinses whatever bits of food are in his mouth back into the cup. Even if he were able to hold the cup himself & not spit water everywhere, he still likes to play with dishes--turning them over, throwing them on the floor--so a regular cup is a pretty labour-intensive way to get a little water into him.

I tried two kinds of sippy cup, but he can't hold them & tip them up to drink, so I have to tip it into his mouth. This inevitably gives him a bit more than he wants & a lot gets spit out onto his shirt/bib/food. After a few tries Sunday & Monday, he sucked on the straw & got water out of a Playtex straw cup. Then he spent ten minutes playing with the cup, getting every side of it covered in damp, avocadoey breadcrumbs.

Today when given the cup, he was still fairly interested in gnawing on the handles & flipping it over, but he sipped a few times without spitting any out. 

Belly spinning: Sprout now spends a lot more time on his belly & seems to have mostly gotten over his aversion to tummy time. He still doesn't really like to be put on his belly, but if he's sitting & decides to fall over onto his side, he'll roll onto his tummy. Then he moves around a bit, rotating like clock hands, still not quite crawling yet. If you give him ten minutes or so, he'll move himself off his play mat. I suspect he's going to be commando crawling within a week.

Mothers' Day

Today is my first official Mothers' Day. I am thrilled to have my teeny little man in my life now, but the occasion also makes me remember some people who aren't here to celebrate it with us. PhD in Parenting inspired this post.

I was a mama-in-waiting on Mothers' Day 2009, but lost our first son, Arrow, at 18 weeks gestation only a few weeks later. Each year, as June 4th nears, I start to think of him a bit more than the rest of the year. I hope the women out there who'd wanted to become mothers by now can still enjoy the day & keep their hopes up for future Mothers' Days.

I am sad because my longest friend, Slavka, will be celebrating Mothers' Day this year as a widow. Though the years she spent with Tomas were all too short, I am happy that at least he helped her become a mother, as she had wanted for so long.

Today my family also celebrates the life of my grandmother. She passed away days before her 91st birthday in April, after a happy life with no regrets. She had several weeks to say goodbye to us all & was well cared for during her fairly short illness. I am thankful that she got a death that was dignified & gentle, but I will miss her.

My baby's 10,000 mile diet

A few years ago, I read 100 Mile Diet & really started to think about where my food comes from. I've tried to cut down on my 'food miles' a little, though not substantially, because I have such a fondness for fruit that is not grown anywhere near here. We order most of our produce from SPUD & they give us a (rough) calculation of our food miles on each invoice.

Since starting solids with Sprout, our food miles average has gone way up. His favourite foods are: avocados, banana & mango. He also eats a lot of rice & quinoa. Not one of these things is, or to my knowledge, can be grown anywhere near Vancouver.

We do try in other ways to make Sprout's little carbon footprint smaller: cloth diapers & wipes, avoiding creams, shampoos, etc made with toxic chemicals, borrowing or buying used toys, clothes & gear, going places on foot/transit, feeding him mostly whole foods that don't require much, if any packaging. We also invest more in quality gear (like a stroller) that we can use for a long time (even with two kids) & potentially resell, rather than buying lower-end stuff that will break & require replacement, sending double the stuff to the landfill, eventually.

It seems we could probably work on some things yet, like avoiding plastic in packaging, toys & food containers. I also want to start hanging more of our laundry, including the diapers, out to dry on our improvised clotheslines on the deck. I'd like to eat less processed food, which would nearly eliminate our consumption of plastic packaging. I doubt we'll ever have a 100-mile diet, however.

Insights from Linguistics 350: First Language Acquisition

Now that I've finished my linguistics course on first language acquisition, I thought I'd share some of what I learned, as it relates to raising a child.

First off, the course is called 'First Language Acquisition' & that's a key point to make here. People often talk about 'learning' to talk, as though it is a skill that can be taught explicitly. Many researchers have delved into this question & the general consensus seems to be that language is not learned in the sense that other skills are. Children don't need lessons or constant correction when they make mistakes: their language skills will develop at their own pace & correction or teaching are unnecessary, if not detrimental.

"Tomasello & Farrar (1986) concluded that those mothers who spend more time talking about the object of the child's visual gaze patterns had babies who (1) used their first words earlier and (2) had larger initial vocabularies." (p.266) From this I take: talk to your baby about the things s/he appears to be interested in.

"...mothers who are more responsive to their children's vocal behaviour typically have children who show more rapid language growth." (p.?) Next lesson: listen & encourage vocalizations from your baby.

Our tendency to simplify our speech & speak "Motherese" or "Child directed speech" (CDS) to babies & young children seems to be a universal phenomenon which likely has a purpose in language development. Our babies, toddlers & children don't give us the same kind of feedback as adults or older kids would when listening to us speak, therefore we slow our speech down & simplify it. Essentially, they're triggering us to give them what they need. It's a great feedback system that helps them acquire language faster than if we just spoke complex sentences as we would with another adult.

"A second study (Furrow, Nelson, & Benedict, 1979) examined six 18-month-olds and their mothers over the course of 9 months. They found that the mothers who used longer & more complex speech when speaking to their children had children who showed the least language gains at the end of the study. In other words, the more mothers used CDS, the more rapidly their children acquired language." (p.266) More evidence to show that baby talk is actually helpful to toddlers.

Language acquisition is a complex process that takes time. You shouldn't expect your child to have perfect pronunciation by kindergarten. "By age 3, most children can produce all the vowel sounds & nearly all the consonant sounds. This does not mean that their productions are 100 percent accurate, but rather that the sounds are produced correctly in at least a few words. Consonants that are likely to be in error, even at the age of four or five are the liquids /r/ & /l/ & the fricatives /v/, /θ/ as in thin, & /ð/ as in the. In most cases, correct pronunciation of all sounds is achieved by eight years of age."  (p.88)  So relax if junior still says 'I weally like dis' at age four: you don't need to rush him off to the speech therapist.

*Source: The Development of Language, 7th ed. Jean Berko-Gleason & Nan Bernstein Ratner

Linnaeus 8.3

I've decided to start a regular weekly post about new things Sprout has figured out each week. '8.3' refers to eight months, three days. I was going to write it in weeks, but decided it would take too much brain power to calculate that at this point.

Every week, it's like we have a new baby, he's learning so fast. Most of the time it's skills he's been working on or attempting for a while & just now perfected. Kind of like water boiling: it's getting hotter & hotter between room temperature & 99c but it doesn't actually boil until it goes that one degree up to 100c.

So, on to this week's 'new' baby:

As of today, he is officially mobile, finally, rolling to get places. For months, I would tell people that he had rolled over.... three times. He just wasn't interested in going anywhere, it seemed. Now that's all behind us & the scramble to baby-proof is ON. Except during diaper changes, his rolling is still only at a speed of maybe two metres per hour, but he's (slowly) going to be able to get at those electrical outlets, cords, choking hazards all over the coffee table, cat food, litter box...

Check out those top teeth!

His fourth tooth (top left incisor) has almost completely broken through & I can see #5 (his right lateral) just under the gums. He's figuring out how to use the top & bottom teeth to bite firm & crunchy food (& me, ouch) so he can eat chunks of raw apple again without gagging. I still get a kick out of hearing him crunch through mum mums.

He's lost almost all the dark hair at the back of his neck, looking rather scruffy from the back. The top, front & sides are getting longer & thicker by the minute, with his bangs starting to reach his eyebrows. I think it'll be enough to get in his eyes & completely cover his ears by his first birthday. He still has the one patch at the crown that he was born with that hasn't fallen out. It's about six inches long & dark at the tips of the hair, blond--like the rest--at the roots. I don't know how long I'm going to last before I give him a haircut because his little baby Donald Trump comb-over slightly offends my sense of aesthetics.

Sprout has started to stand up when holding onto furniture or people. I was telling another mama after our Stroller Fitness class that he doesn't really stand up, then held him up against the coffee table & he did it. He stayed standing, even when the other baby squeezed in between
him & the table. He just hung onto the other little guy's shoulders for another minute or two.

A while ago he got his pincer grip figured out (peas, blueberries & Nutrios are go!) & lately he loves to point & poke with his index finger. He is constantly pressing my little star tattoo as if it's going to play music.

His favourite toy of the week is... wait for it... his hairbrush. He grabbed it off the bureau when I was changing him a few days ago & has played with it for hours since then. His favourite thing to do with it is to run it back & forth across the bars of his crib or just whack it against hard surfaces. He seems a bit perplexed when I try to actually brush his hair with it.

My orange day

While eating breakfast, I started to notice all the orange things in my life & decided to do a little photo essay of the day.

Vitamin C.

Breakfast.

Getting dressed (again, as shirt #1 got covered in breakfast).

Dental hygiene.

This moose is delicious.

Time to go vote!

Our polling station, at David Livingstone Elementary.

K & A arrive at the Grandview-Woodlands baby group.

It's not Linus, it's Schroeder.

Healthy orange lunch.

At the Vancouver-Kingsway NDP Zone House, getting our outside scrutineer packages.

Yams & peas for dinner.

At Heritage Hall for the victory party.

People were drinking orange.

Sprouty also got thirsty.

Had one for the road.