It's a Hit

The tower arrived. Dessa is in love with it.

Here she is on her first morning 'Avec Tower'. She ate breakfast in her tower. She watched Daddy make French toast while she was in the tower. She observed us unloading the dishwasher, doing dishes and cleaning up the place. All while she was in the tower.

And people? We could do all those things without listening to her scream in frustration because she LOVES the tower!

It's only gotten better since then. She sees the tower, she wants in. We put her in and she entertains herself while watching whatever we're doing (of course, we don't leave her there unsupervised, but, you know. Duh). I've left some Tupperware and old plastic spoons out for her to grab and play with and she happily bangs around and chats me up while I cook dinner or make cookies or generally futz around the kitchen. It was well worth the price.



I'll make a chef out of her. Oh yes I will.
Posted by GoddessKristin on 10/28/08 at 08:11 PM [link]

I'd Buy That

Dessa has been absolutely fascinated lately with all things kitchen related. Dave and I both enjoy cooking, and I've been on a baking binge lately, so we've been in there a lot. Our daughter is tall, but (thankfully) not that tall, so she can't see over the counters and this pisses her off completely. In her frustration she wedges herself between our legs and the counter and then stares pitifully up, begging to be lifted into seeing position.

You can imagine how safe that is when we're wielding a knife.

The ongoing arguments give a new meaning to the term Iron Chef Battle. I want to encourage Dess to be curious about everything, especially cooking if only because I love it so much. I also think it's a skill that, properly presented, can be a real gift to children. It can be time spent together with no TV and no distractions. It's a life skill that lets you be good to yourself and your body. Knowing how to cook, how to eat well and healthfully - that's something I want my girl to have.

On the other hand I don't fancy giving it to her while dropping onions on her head, either.

Enter the "Little Partners Learning Tower Toddler Step Stool". This massive tower provides a safe (though high) platform for toddlers and other shorties to access kitchen counters and other inaccessible places (assuming you're willing to drag the thing around, which I'm probably not). I first came across it in a blog about a year ago and thought, "Well, that's a cool idea. If I could afford one, I'd seriously look into it. But I can't think that I'd actually need one anyway."

Enter Dessa Juliana Child, future Bocuse d'Or winner.

Some solution has become imperative here because she is miserable and I am frustrated. This tower thing is pricey, but I suspect it will be a life-saver, so I brought it up with my mom as a possible Christmas present, split a few ways. If mom and my aunt and I all go in together - cheap(er)! And she agreed.

And then the battles began to get worse and worse and worse and I posited that Dessa does not know from a calendar and maybe we might consider kicking in for the thing now and just calling it early Christmas because we are losing our damn minds in the kitchen. Happily, mom agreed and a tower is now swiftly on it's way courtesy of Amazon.com, my great love of loves.

This morning I was driving to work and considering the great possibilities of the tower. You know how, when you're driving, you let your mind go and imagine unrealistic things (well, maybe it's just me, but go with me on this). I thought about how it was time to begin real traditions with Dessa and then when she's 80 she could say things like, "My mother and I baked cookies every Christmas for as long as I can remember" and "You know those cookies you kids love so much? Your great-grandma and I baked them for the first time when I was 5" and "I know you kids think I'm a great baker but everything I ever learned I know from my own mother."

I am possibly a little ego-centric.

I was also maybe so involved in this fantasy that I momentarily imagined going into a baking business with my sweet daughter. People from all around would gather to purchase our newly baked fresh cookies and cakes. And, of course, though I am All Ego All The Time, I would name the business after my daughter, my inspiration, my true soulmate.

"Dessa's Cookies"? No, too plebian. "DJ's Bakery"? Too boring. "Dessa's Creations"? Closer, but not catchy enough. Could I combine the words to make a new and catchy term for our endeavor?

Of course I could. "Dessa's Creations" could become...

"Dessa-crations"

Oh. No.
Posted by GoddessKristin on 10/14/08 at 09:41 AM [link]

A Thing I Thought I'd Never Miss

When Dessa was born, I had every expectation in the world that I would breastfeed her. My more than adequate chest had led me to believe that if my body did nothing else right in this life, I would, by God, be able to breastfeed my child. As well as, quite possibly, whole hoards of other children should the need arise.

Well, as the Jewish proverb goes, "We make plans, God laughs."

On the fourth morning of Dessa's life, Dave and I drove her to the emergency room because she had vomited blood. God might have been laughing, but I most certainly was not. I knew my baby was actually fine and that the blood had come from me (I had just had an excruciating up-close-and-personal nursing session with my cracked and bleeding nipples, after all) but Dave was not so sure, I was exhausted, and I was really hoping that somebody would just take the burden of feeling that I had to continue trying to nurse off my shoulders.

Breastfeeding had been a nightmare to that point. Dessa had a suboptimal latch and an undiagnosed raging case of thrush, which meant that every time I tried to put her to the breast I felt a searing pain like battery acid rushing through my aforementioned ample chest. It had gotten to the point where I was crying in pain every time we tried and I dreaded trying. To further complicate the problem, I was terribly engorged but not producing much to speak of, so nursing sessions lasted far longer than they should have. I felt tremendous guilt that within only a few days I was so ready to give up so I kept trying. We saw lactation consultants (useless), I took fenugreek pills (stinky and useless), I drank beer (insert Homer Simspon "whoo-hoo!" here. Also? Useless), and I pumped. Every 2 hours I was either attached to the baby or attached to the wheezing Madela pump. And I got drops for my efforts. Sad, sad drops.

It was, to put it mildly, a horrendous experience.

On the morning of the emergency room visit, after we'd confirmed that the baby was actually fine, we were advised to feed Dessa some formula because she was jaundiced and losing weight. The failure of my body to provide adequate fluids meant that she wasn't getting the jaundice flushed out of her nor the calories she needed. You can imagine how I felt about that. So we stopped at Walgreen's on the way home (because it was five in the morning and nothing else was open) and purchased formula.

Fortunately we'd already gotten a starter pack of bottles so we didn't have to make a bleary-eyed decision about feeding systems after visiting the ER. We got home, boiled everything to sterilize it (because of the thrush we spent the first 2 weeks boiling things daily) and fed a famished baby girl a bottle. She sucked it down like one starved (perhaps because she was) and fell right into the best sleep she'd had since her birth.

Coming to peace with the switch to formula took awhile, but I can admit now that it was a relief. It transformed feeding my baby from a dreaded trial to a cozy pleasure. It meant that Dave could participate in her care even more directly and that I could sleep through a feeding or two. And most of all it meant that I could go from nursing consuming my life to actually enjoying my gorgeous and wonderful child. Once I'd worked through the guilt and terror that I was doing something wrong, I finally came to see how it was so very right for us.

During Dessa's eleventh month we began weaning her off the formula and onto whole milk. An ounce at a time we mixed the two until, by her first birthday, she was drinking just milk in her bottles. When we finished the last canister of formula, all I could think was, "Well, that's an expense we don't have anymore." Honestly that was the extent of my farewell to formula. You'd think with all the hoopla I went through to get there in the first place, saying goodbye would have struck me as a little more momentous. But it didn't.

Last night's farewell, surprisingly, did. Dessa just turned 16 months old and we'd been advised by her pediatrician to start weaning her off the bottle slowly. The goal was that sometime between 18 months and 2 years she'd be off bottles entirely. I wasn't so sure about getting rid of them quite so soon, though I did know I wanted her off them by her second birthday.

Dessa surprises me often, however. We'd gotten to the point where we were only giving her 4 ounces of milk in a bottle in the morning and evening. Everything else came from her sippy cup. At first she was not thrilled with this. When the bottle was empty she'd throw it to the floor and often wail in frustration. Slowly she got used to it, however, and when the bottle was empty she'd just... be done.

And then she started not even finishing the bottles. And ounce or an ounce and half would be left and she'd drop the bottle on the floor and walk away. So disinterested was she that I thought I'd try a little experiment this week and not offer bottles after breakfast and dinner at all - only sippy cups.

And you know what? She did not care. She takes the cups, wanders away drinking them and simultaneously trying to walk a straight line like an alcoholic sailor and and is no worse for wear. The transition was seamless.

Well, except for me. I am left flummoxed by the fact that my daughter is already finished with bottles. How could this happen so soon? I spent a lot of time fretting over those freaking bottles, damn it! Shouldn't there be more fanfare as they pass from our lives?

But there is not. Last night I admitted that there didn't seem to be any more need for the bottles and drying racks to be taking up space on the kitchen counter and I packed them all into a plastic shopping bag. I set aside one small and one large bottle "just in case" and then...

I put the bag in the garage. I couldn't bring myself to toss it out Just Yet. I might be wrong, after all, and we might need those bottles. Dessa might decide sippy cups are for nerds and she might demand another fluid delivery system. She might get sick and then she might refuse a cup.

I might not be ready for my baby to grow up. That's a possibility, too.
Posted by GoddessKristin on 10/03/08 at 10:18 AM [link]