The title of this post was supposed to be:
The Day I Decided To STOP Making My Own Baby Food.
But I thought it was too long for the Title bar.
However, I am not sure the title I did go with is much shorter. ;)
In all honesty there was not an official day that I stopped making baby food. It just started to dwindle down to nothing in the freezer. I would find myself buying produce and before I knew it, days had passed and it spoiled. Meals would go by where I just fed her yogurt and called it a day. She was hungry, I was defeated. And I came to the difficult realization that with 4 kids, I just didn't have it in me to make baby food. The process of purchasing, steaming, packaging, and freezing became the most daunting task in the world- right along with folding the obnoxious amount of socks this family consumes. Not to mention attempting to vacuum with the worst vacuum cleaner man created. *Note to self and husband: Do not EVER buy a Hoover again.*
The socks and vacuum were not giving me daily angst, but the baby food was. Cause my baby had to eat! And during the week I do 14 school drop off and pick-ups. FOURTEEN. Not to mention the baby needing to fit naps in there and the fact that the blender is a very loud appliance. But it plagued me nonetheless.You see when Vivi was a baby I enjoyed making her baby food more than any other mothering task (other than rocking her). I looked forward to finding new recipes and trying out new textures on her. I relished the fact that my baby would eat anything. At almost 5 years old, she still does! But for some reason back then, the smell of beets didn't give me the gag reflex like it does now and pureed chicken didn't quite have the cat-food effect on my nausea like it does today. And I was actually able to feed myself lunch 5 years ago.
But times...they are a changin'.
What caused me to fully embrace my packaged baby food only lifestyle?
Two things ~ One: these little bad boys
As my mother in law calls "space food". Awww...yes!! Isn't it glorious? All the nutrition of homemade with minimal processing in a feed yourself style pouch! Genius, I tell ya. I did try several different kinds of jarred food to which my sweet baby, with clearly a high class taste, spit right out at me and gagged. But she sucks these down like she hasn't eaten in a week.
So we have moved on to the most expensive line of baby food.
And it is okay by me, as long as my blender can stay in the cabinet.
The second thing that brought me to this personal quest to simplify my life was this little gem of a book I am reading from the library:
Oh bless you, Mrs. Lisa Quinn.
She says that she is a recovering Martha Stewart Wanna Be after having written countless books on home decorating, crafting, etc. and having a show on HGTV. She says this within the opening chapter: "Recognizing the problem is the first step to recovery. Whether you like it or not, the truth is simple: We don't slave over all this domestic drivel for our families or ourselves, we do it for the other moms. For us, Mommy Competition is on, and dangit, we're going to win."
Oh my!!!
Y'all I laughed so hard when I read that. Such truth. Oh my goodness.
Then she goes on to write about how she was watching Martha Stewart on tv sewing by hand 3,500 real cranberries to a wreath. The author says that on a normal day she would have ran down to Costco for her own 3500 cranberries,
"but for some reason, this time was different. For the first time ever, I looked at Martha, my idol, and thought "this chick is crazy!"
Hilarious! And oh SO true.
So as I read through this book that will likely liberate me from the wife/mommy guilt that plagues us all when we sit and reflect on all the things we don't do right...I will not be folding my fitted sheets (I never did anyway). And I will be waiting awhile before I begin what was going to be my latest project:
The New Year House Cleaning Weekly Regimen
and
Weekly Meal Planning and Grocery List Charts.
Who am I kidding?
I need a new vacuum first.
But I thought it was too long for the Title bar.
However, I am not sure the title I did go with is much shorter. ;)
In all honesty there was not an official day that I stopped making baby food. It just started to dwindle down to nothing in the freezer. I would find myself buying produce and before I knew it, days had passed and it spoiled. Meals would go by where I just fed her yogurt and called it a day. She was hungry, I was defeated. And I came to the difficult realization that with 4 kids, I just didn't have it in me to make baby food. The process of purchasing, steaming, packaging, and freezing became the most daunting task in the world- right along with folding the obnoxious amount of socks this family consumes. Not to mention attempting to vacuum with the worst vacuum cleaner man created. *Note to self and husband: Do not EVER buy a Hoover again.*
The socks and vacuum were not giving me daily angst, but the baby food was. Cause my baby had to eat! And during the week I do 14 school drop off and pick-ups. FOURTEEN. Not to mention the baby needing to fit naps in there and the fact that the blender is a very loud appliance. But it plagued me nonetheless.You see when Vivi was a baby I enjoyed making her baby food more than any other mothering task (other than rocking her). I looked forward to finding new recipes and trying out new textures on her. I relished the fact that my baby would eat anything. At almost 5 years old, she still does! But for some reason back then, the smell of beets didn't give me the gag reflex like it does now and pureed chicken didn't quite have the cat-food effect on my nausea like it does today. And I was actually able to feed myself lunch 5 years ago.
But times...they are a changin'.
What caused me to fully embrace my packaged baby food only lifestyle?
Two things ~ One: these little bad boys
As my mother in law calls "space food". Awww...yes!! Isn't it glorious? All the nutrition of homemade with minimal processing in a feed yourself style pouch! Genius, I tell ya. I did try several different kinds of jarred food to which my sweet baby, with clearly a high class taste, spit right out at me and gagged. But she sucks these down like she hasn't eaten in a week.
So we have moved on to the most expensive line of baby food.
And it is okay by me, as long as my blender can stay in the cabinet.
The second thing that brought me to this personal quest to simplify my life was this little gem of a book I am reading from the library:
Oh bless you, Mrs. Lisa Quinn.She says that she is a recovering Martha Stewart Wanna Be after having written countless books on home decorating, crafting, etc. and having a show on HGTV. She says this within the opening chapter: "Recognizing the problem is the first step to recovery. Whether you like it or not, the truth is simple: We don't slave over all this domestic drivel for our families or ourselves, we do it for the other moms. For us, Mommy Competition is on, and dangit, we're going to win."
Oh my!!!
Y'all I laughed so hard when I read that. Such truth. Oh my goodness.
Then she goes on to write about how she was watching Martha Stewart on tv sewing by hand 3,500 real cranberries to a wreath. The author says that on a normal day she would have ran down to Costco for her own 3500 cranberries,
"but for some reason, this time was different. For the first time ever, I looked at Martha, my idol, and thought "this chick is crazy!"
Hilarious! And oh SO true.
So as I read through this book that will likely liberate me from the wife/mommy guilt that plagues us all when we sit and reflect on all the things we don't do right...I will not be folding my fitted sheets (I never did anyway). And I will be waiting awhile before I begin what was going to be my latest project:
The New Year House Cleaning Weekly Regimen
and
Weekly Meal Planning and Grocery List Charts.
Who am I kidding?
I need a new vacuum first.
Posts
5 friends commented!:
Go ahead and add Bissell to the crappy vacuum list too! We finally chunked ours after 7 years and sprung for the Dyson Animal version. Revolutionized our home!
Favorite post ever!
We have a dyson animal version too and have had it a few years now and really like it! I also recently got a shark steam mop and really like that too! Its much easier than a normal mop and sanitizes the floor. Now with a crawler in the house I find it makes things easier to keep the floors cleaner. I've been giving my little one just bits and pieces of food and she has been doing great! She just turned 10 months but I started doing it around 9 months. It helped reduce the amount of pureeing I had to do too. I still puree some things for her but she is getting really good at just getting table food now. Bits of steam veggies are her favorite cut small and grilled chicken cut up small too.
So even as a two year old, Nathanael loves the squeezie pouches. We call the simply prunes one "purple applesauce," and he loves it and I don't have to give him a medicinal laxative. I also love that they travel well in his bag or my purse, so I always have a healthy snack (bribe) (I mean incentive) everywhere we go!
I've been saying it in the college class I teach for years...that we--as women--tend to expect the 50s "stay at home" mom perfect looking house of ourselves--and every other woman we know, but still have today's expectations on ourselves (and each other) as well (feeding our kids organic foods, look perfectly, for some of us that also includes working/career or homeschooling, present "perfect" life...heck lets just say do everything that today's "ideal" mom/woman does). Its overwhelming the amount of pressure women put on ourselves on each other.
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