This weekend I made blueberries, peas, green beans, prunes, and mango.

Here they are cooking away!

The blueberries were a frozen bag from Trader Joes and they did not turn out.  They tasted like dirt so I ended up throwing them away.

I’m not going to feed Lucy something that I wouldn’t eat.

Prunes

Prunes are really easy to make.  I got organic prunes from Whole Foods this time but I think I prefer Newman’s Own Organic Prunes because they blend up to a much nicer consistency than the Whole Foods prunes.

For prunes, place them in a bowl and cover them with warm water to reconstitute them.  I let mine soak for about 30 minutes.

Once they are nice and plump throw them into the food processor with some of the leftover water.  Blend.  Add water until the consistency you desire is reached.  I had to add all the water to these prunes this week to get to this consistency:

Lucy loves her prunes and Mommy loves what they do for Lucy ;-P

Prunes are just dried plums.  I’ve been looking for organic plums but no luck so far!

Green Beans and Peas

Green Beans and Peas are staples in our house and they are the biggest pain in the booty to make.  They taste SOOOO much better than the commercially prepated baby food so it’s worth it to me.  I get the frozen versions of both peas and green beans.

Green Beans

Peas

Organic green beans are really difficult to find-in fact I haven’t seen them since I started making Lucy’s baby food.  The frozen green beans are great because they’re already trimmed and there’s nothing I hate worse than trimming green beans!  And have you seen fresh peas?  Yeah…didn’t think so 🙂

I steamed both veggies until just done.  The green beans got a tad bit overcooked because Lucy woke up unexpectedly-I turned them off but didn’t take off the lid and they steamed about a minute too long.  They had just changed color but were still nice and plump-not mushy. I wish they were a little more vibrant but they still tasted really good.

I toss them in the food processor with a small amount (2 Tablespoons or so) of the cooking water:

Process for about 1 minute.  Until they look like this:

Green Beans

Peas

Then I go through the process of straining them.  I use a mesh sieve and push the peas/green beans through with a spoon.  I do a small amount at a time-if you add to much it doesn’t really squish through very well.

Green Beans

Peas

After I push them through with a spoon I run a spatula on the underside of the sieve to get the vegetables off.

I put the veggies that don’t push through the sieve into a bowl and process them one more time and go through the process again.

Left Over Green Beans

For both the peas and the green beans I steamed 2 pounds and got 1 pound of baby food-and a crampy hand!  I’ve tried just adding more water and not straining them and they make Lucy gag. You wouldn’t believe how much ruffage is in a pea or green bean.  When I make the baby food I always try to swallow it without chewing it.  If it gets stuck in my throat then I know it’ll cause Lucy issues. Both unstrained peas and green beans get stuck in my throat! Here’s what they look like when they’re done:

Green Beans

Peas

The fruits (ha!) of Saturday night’s labor:

Mangos

Unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures of the mango making but it was super simple and Lucy LOVED mango.  Yesterday was the first day I gave them to her and she ate an ENTIRE mango all by herself!  For the first batch that I gave her I just mushed with a fork.  It wasn’t super smooth but she “chewed” and got them down just fine.

The one thing to keep in mind with mangos is that the skin can cause rashes in some people so I make sure to wash my hands throughout the process of making them.  I also make sure to not get ANY skin into the puree.

The great thing about mangos is that you don’t have to cook them.  Just get a ripe mango, cut it up, (here’s a good tutorial), put it in the food processor (for a big batch-otherwise just use a fork) and process until smooth.  I found organic mangos for $1.30 each yesterday-I got 6 of them and I may go buy more since Lucy liked them so much.

Man, I wish the weekends were three days long!  But I know that if they were I’d be wishing for four days.

Yesterday, while Shaun was mountain biking, Lucy and I went down to Richard and Elaina’s for breakfast and then to watch Elaina’s soccer game.  We had a blast!  Lucy LOVES balls and loved watching soccer!

She sat up the entire 90 minutes we were there!

I was going from 8 am (Shaun let me sleep in!) until 9 pm yesterday.  I literally did not stop all day.  It was an exhausting but good day.

Here’s today’s picture!

My two favorite people 🙂

Things are going really well and I’ve been really happy.  I have to say that the last 7 months have been  happiest of my life, they’ve been hard too but oh so happy.  I really don’t have much else to say right now.  🙂

We’ve had a really chill day and I don’t feel like we got anything done.  We went to breakfast this morning and then to our local toystore to get Lucy a light-up drum, ball, and teether.  She really doesn’t have many toys and Shaun decided she needed an interactive toy for sitting up.  She loves it:

We also did some shopping for us today.  Shaun got some much needed new shoes and I got the make-up that I’ve needed for over a week now.  It’s 6:30 and Lucy needs some dinner and then bed.  I plan to make green beans, peas, prunes, and blueberries tonight.

Here’s her daily picture:

Although this one is pretty cute:

This one too!

Can you tell I like the Eye-Fi?

We got the Eye-Fi installed last night.  It was doubtful for a bit whether it would work or not.  We got the card that has Geo-Tagging capabilities-Shaun really wanted this for his mountain biking pictures-and that card only comes in 4 GB.  Our camera shut down when the 4 GB card got put into it and we thought we were toast.  Then our camera said “Card Reader Error.” Well…dang.  Super techy husband to the rescue!  Shaun was able to find a firmware update for our camera that would allow it to take a 4 GB card.  He just saved the update to one of our other memory cards, stuck it in the camera and there you go-our camera now takes 4 GB cards!  Technology (and my husband) are cool!

Thus, I give you Lucy’s daily picture(s)!

Shaun thinks a daily picture is a great idea too so hopefully we can keep this up.

Last night I was walking home and this was parked in front of my house:

Sweet ride, eh?

Did anyone see The Office last night? Oh.My.God. It was ridiculously funny. Shaun and I laughed out loud at least 15 times. Between watching Survivor, The Office, and getting the Eye Fi all set up we didn’t get to bed until 11 last night-that’s late for this Mommy!

I had another nightmare filled night-boo.  If this doesn’t stop I’m going to schedule a visit with my therapist.  We’ll see how tonight goes.  I know that I’m really stressed at work and home life is crazy (just because taking care of Lucy and the house and my husband takes all my time) but I don’t feel like these two things should be causing these major anxiety dreams.

Speaking of home life being crazy, my awesome husband was super helpful this morning. Lucy woke up at 5:10 to eat and didn’t want to go back to sleep after I fed her. I brought her into bed with us to try and get her to fall back asleep and it worked for about 30 minutes but at 6 she wanted to be up.  Shaun got up with her and got her ready for the day.  He let me “sleep in” until 6:45.  He even got her bottles ready to go and put the bag on top of her “Daily Communication” paper that we have to fill out for daycare everyday.  He was then playing with her and had a little finger puppet on and the finger puppet was telling Lucy how she is lucky to have a Mommy that works so hard and does so much for her.  I’m getting all teary writing about it.  Seriously?  How sweet.  I really do have an awesome husband.  He knows just what to do to make me feel appreciated and loved.

The Weekend

It supposed to rain all weekend.  BOO.  I still need to go to Bare Essentials to get my make-up. That’s the one thing from my to do list for last weekend that didn’t get done since Lucy was sick.  Maybe I’ll go to the mall all by myself.  I think this will be a great weekend to finish our baby proofing.  She’s starting to get more and more mobile and inquisitive.  We need to change out the electric outlet covers and brace the furniture to the wall and then we’ll be done.

Yeah….Lucy was sitting in Shaun’s lap and pulled herself to a standing postion last night.  Before we know it, she’ll be doing that on EVERYTHING.