Finding Safer Produce

Ever since Pumpkin started eating solids, we have been trying to eat organic foods as much as is possible, or as much as makes sense.  If the organic produce is available in our grocery store and it doesn't look like it is half-rotten, which unfortunately it often is at Kroger, I try to go organic.  We have a new grocery chain which opened up up a store nearby.  This store doesn't offer a huge amount of organic produce, but it does offer a lot of more locally grown produce and it also has a great store line of other organic products.  Hopefully, I'm not just wasting money but when I look at the ingredients on the organic line of products, I at least recognize the ingredients and do not need to pull out a Periodic Table to try to decipher what chemicals have been added.  Another benefit of the new store is that they have spurred Kroger to start prominently selling reusable grocery bags in our local store, which I have purchased, and I find them to be not only a greener solution but also much easier to use because they are sturdier and hold more than your traditional plastic bags.

If you are concerned about the pesticides in the produce you are buying, you may want to check out the Pesticide Produce Guide which lists which items are most likely to have large amounts of pesticides found in or on them.  I found a reference to it on a blog post on Green Mom Finds, which discusses the many eco-friendly and safer products that are becoming available. 

We're trying to live greener here at the Pumpkin Patch, though we have a long way to go.  We do not have curbside recycling in our community here, as we did in our previous city, so we have fallen off the recycling wagon.  However, we have purchased bins for recycling and we need to start soon since we want to set a good example for Pumpkin.  I'll post about it when we start so hopefully my guilt from letting you all know that we're not currently recycling will spur me to start now.

Spaghetti!!

I finally have the requisite spaghetti covered baby picture of Pumpkin.  I made some homemade meat sauce for him the other night and it was the first time he had long pasta noodles so of course he had it everywhere!  Even after his bath that night, he still had orange-stained cheeks.  It was so cute, it was worth the painstaking effort of cleaning up the high chair seat...

He's still only eating with his hands but as you can tell from this picture, he is at least starting to figure out what the spoon is actually supposed to do...

He has been in a much better mood this past week.  His seventh tooth cut through last night (with I think one to three additional teeth getting ready to follow) and he also seems to be past his latest cold.  I had been somewhat freaking out because he had been very irritable for several days following his vaccinations so of course, I had been worrying about whether or not he was going to have long-term effects from the shots.  Of course, who wouldn't be cranky after 4 shots, a cold and multiple teeth cutting through their gums??  I know I'm not the only mom who worries about these things, but sometimes I do wish that we didn't have quite so much information at our disposal.  Believe me, I can come up with quite enough things to worry about Pumpkin on my own without reading the latest and greatest scientific study!

He's Growing Up

I know there has been a long hiatus from the blog. When did holidays get so hectic? Pumpkin’s first Christmas was good, although he ended up getting sick. Since we were out of town, we took him to an urgent care where the doctor said he did not have another ear infection but she did put him on an antibiotic since he was developing a nasty cough. I still suspect he may have had a flare-up with his ears so I was glad that he was given the antibiotic. Pumpkin enjoyed the gifts (more so than the wrapping paper, which surprised me) and definitely enjoyed the attention from the legions of doting grandparents and aunts/uncles.

At the Pumpkin’s nine month appointment right before Christmas, our pediatrician told us he wanted to have him weaned off of baby foods and onto pure table foods, weaned off of the bottle and weaned off of formula by his twelve month appointment. Whoa, my world has been turned upside down!! He wants him drinking milk out of an open cup as well. The Pumpkin does pretty well out of an open cup when we hold it for him but even with us holding it, he ends up drenched by the end of the meal. I’ve gone to a triple bib technique- two cloth bibs and one vinyl bib but he still manages to become drenched around the neckline. How many outfit changes are we supposed to have during a day? Since Pumpkin is already in the twelve month sizes and is starting to outgrow some of those, we only have so many baby clothes that fit! I’m confused about the sizes since at his last appointment (which was right after a bout of a stomach virus) he was only in the 25th – 30th percentile in weight. The table food transition is also daunting, although we have been making all of his baby food and keeping it at more of a chopped vs. pureed consistency. A friend referred me to an excellent website: http://www.wholesomebabyfood.com/ which I think will give me some good ideas about how to proceed on the nutrition front.

We have been trying to give the Pumpkin as much organic and preservative/chemical-free food as possible. At least the table food transition should get all of us to eat healthier! A good blog I found for more organic baby products is: http://greenmomfinds.com/ We have not gone extreme on the green side of baby products but we’re trying to incorporate more and more as we read more about the hidden dangers in all of the products we use. We’ll see what type of reasonable balance we’re able to strike.