Homemade What?

This has been a momentous week for us. Our baby has his first tooth, and we "officially" started him on solids. We'd been giving him tiny, tiny nibbles here and there, but this week we actually bought some organic applesauce for him. I also made him some homemade "cheerios". Yep, you read that correctly - cheerios. Now in all fairness they don't look like the little o's everyone knows and loves. They're more like tiny little blobs. They are made from oatmeal though and they fall apart easily in the mouth which is why they get to be called cheerios.

 

I like to give my babies as little commercial baby food as possible. Sometimes the little jars are convenient and easy so we get them, but mostly I try to just give them baby-friendly versions of what we eat. A lot of times I just finely mush up whatever we're having and feed that. I like for them to get used to different textures as well as the taste of the foods we enjoy as a family.

 

None of our children are picky eaters. I don't know if it's because I'm a little unconventional when it comes to feeding them, but they all have healthy and wide-ranging appetites. My husband tends to be even more eager than me to introduce them to the foods he loves, offering them tastes off his plate even sooner than I would.

 

Anyway, back to the cheerios. I can't remember how I stumbled on the recipe for it, but if you want to try it you can find it here. It's not something you could pour in a bowl and eat with milk. I think it would just fall apart, but they are the perfect size and texture for little fingers and mouths. We like to crumble Jonah's into his applesauce to give it a little more umph. Otherwise, I break it up and feed it to him because he's not quite into transferring food from a bowl to his mouth yet - soon, though, very soon. Like the originals they're not very sweet.

 

I've been doing a lot of sewing and scrapbooking this week too. I love both of these hobbies, and I love that both of these hobbies benefit others.

 

My five-year-old son has been working very hard to learn his alphabet, and I'm happy to report that he is on the cusp of being able to read. It is so exciting. This confirms something I suspected for a few months now. He only needed my total undivided attention to master this skill. Since the older children finished school we've been doing his letters for 20-30 minutes a day with various games, cards and handwriting exercises. He will be my sixth child to teach to read, and I think my most rewarding because it feels like we've had to work so hard at it. Very soon he'll be doing more than just reading pictures.

 

"reading" to his baby brother

 

 

How was your week? I hope it was a joyous one.