LittleStuff's Blog » Slopsville

Warm Welcome to Everyday Maternity

Katy — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 14:27:54 +0000

Please join us in giving a warm welcome to another great company joining our superb shopping directory.

Everyday Maternity is just the sort of site expecting Mums like to shop from. Lots and lots of choice for all your maternity and breastfeeding clothing needs and more.

What better way to shop with a bump on your lap than on-line from the comfort of your own home?!

Slopsville – The Rice Pudding.

laura — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 21:31:07 +0000

Happy Joe

So I finally got around to making Helen’s rice pudding. Kind of. I thought there was only one way to make rice pudding. So I didn’t think I needed to bother making the arduous trek from the kitchen to the computer (about ten feet) to look up Helen’s recipe. How different could it be from the one on the side of the rice box? That was my first mistake.

My second mistake was to not read the “recipe” all the way to the end. I scanned it, I did. I knew that at the end it said to put the rice pudding in an ovenproof dish and so I happily followed the rest of the instructions. I put the milk in a pan and brought it to the boil. It boiled over. Of course it did. Ignoring the mess, I added the rice and gave it a stir, at which point sheets of burned milk floated to the top. I hoiked them out and threw them in the bin. I stirred. I hoiked. I threw. I started to get a bad feeling. I turned the hob off and shoved the pan to the back of the stove and went off in a huff.

Later, I decided it probably wasn’t so bad – what’s a bit of charred milk between friends? So I went back and read the rest of the recipe. “Pour into an ovenproof dish and brown under the grill.” What? WHAT?! That’s not a rice pudding! Rice pudding is baked not BOILED! I looked up Helen’s recipe, realised that was much more like it, and threw the Bad Pudding away.

Yesterday, Harry helped me try again. In fact, it was so ridiculously simple, he could have done it on his own. Rice, milk, sugar, nutmeg in an oven dish. Put it in the oven. Wait a while. Eat. It got a bit overcooked, but that’s because David was making dinner and wouldn’t let me in the kitchen to take it out of the oven. But with a little milk added, it’s right as rain.

Joe had some for his tea last night and loved it. He had some more – mixed with banana and his new favourite thing in the world: a rusk* – for his breakfast. He polished off the lot. (See photo!)

BAD pud

GOOD pud

And what did I learn from this? That a “serving suggestion” on the side of a packet is not a recipe. And that I should only follow recipes suitable for 5-year-olds.

* I’m regretting introducing Joe to rusks. 75% of the household surfaces and 100% of Joe are now permanently encrusted with biscuity goodness.

–
Keris Stainton

http://www.keris-stainton.com
http://www.fiveminutespeace.co.uk

My first YA book – DELLA SAYS: OMG! – is out 6 May 2010:

Della’s over the moon when she kisses her long-standing crush at a party – but then she discovers her diary has disappeared…
When scans of embarrassing pages are sent to her mobile and appear on Facebook, Della’s distraught – how can she enjoy her first proper romance when someone, somewhere, knows all her deepest, darkest secrets?

Slopsville – Our baby Weaning Diary. Week 11.

laura — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 11:32:32 +0000

Each week, I get a newsletter about what to expect at each stage of my baby’s development. A couple of weeks ago, it included the following:

“Any day now, if she hasn’t already, your baby may try feeding herself.”

Any day now? Joe’s been doing it for months! Months! Trying, I mean. He’s only actually succeeded in the last couple of weeks, but he’s been failing at it for ages.

I think he sees it as a great way to combine his two favourite things: eating and making a mess. Yes, he’s happy for me to feed him, but I generally manage to get the food into his mouth, whereas, I imagine he thinks that if he does it himself he could shove it in his ear, throw it on the floor… the possibilities are endless!

But he’s not unaware that if he sticks the food in his ear, he’s not actually getting to eat it, so he certainly wouldn’t want to feed himself exclusively – he sees it as an addition to me feeding him, not a replacement. One spoon from me, one from him, one from me, etc. Of course, that also means he can feed himself during the moments I’m feeding *myself* his food (don’t judge me! You’ve all done it too!).

Oh and Joe is so keen on scoffing that he will not tolerate baby spoons, hell no. Food can fall off a baby spoon. Also, they’re too small. Joe has to use a teaspoon. Ironically (or perhaps fortunately, since we’ve got 10,000 of them) (we haven’t really, that’s an Alanis Morissette joke) (oh yes), Harry now prefers to use the baby spoons.

I await the newsletter that includes the line: ““Any day now, if she hasn’t already, your baby may try cooking for herself.” But in the meantime, I’m going to try Helen’s rice pudding recipe. Today. Be afraid.

–
Keris Stainton

http://www.keris-stainton.com
http://www.fiveminutespeace.co.uk

Slopsville – Our Baby Weaning Diary – Week Ten

Katy — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 09:23:07 +0000

A couple of weeks ago, I was send a baby food kit for review. It included a hand blender. Now we bought a hand blender when we had Harry and it was rubbish. It didn’t seem to blend the food, rather it just rearranged it. But this one – wow. From ‘proper’ grown-up food to baby slop in seconds. (That’s not the review by the way, I’ll be writing a proper review on the main site.)

The first time I used it was on spaghetti bolognaise. Joe loved it, but, more importantly as far as I was concerned, was that I made it with the spag bol leftovers that, in the past, would have gone in the bin. (Or been scoffed by me during the traditional 9pm ‘what can I eat NOW’ hunt.)

So now, as David carries the dinner plates back into the kitchen, I am heard to call, “Don’t throw anything away! Joe can have it!”

I should probably pause here to say that I don’t think I’m supposed to feed Joe other people’s leftovers in the same way you’re supposed to throw the rest of the pot away if your baby’s only eaten some (because, according to my health visitor, it will have been “contaminated by his salaver” [pronounced like palaver]), but I mean, really? What about the waste? Joe likes to chew Harry’s feet, I don’t think we need to worry about his own “salaver”.

So last night we had a roast dinner. I couldn’t quite finish mine (yeah, okay, I left half a parsnip) and so, along with the extra carrot and potato David had prepared and some chicken Harry didn’t want, Joe had one-pot roast dinner for his lunch and will be having the same for his tea.

Frankly, it’s a revelation. The trouble is, it’s addictive. I’ve started looking at everything with an eye to mushing it for Joe. Half a bowl of Cheerios? It could work. Pizza? Why not? Sandwiches? Would probably be disgusting, but in for a penny..!

I admit, I’m exaggerating for comic effect. (I ate the leftover pizza. Obviously.), but it’s still great fun. It’s like having a dog. Or a composter. Maybe I should start putting Joe’s dirty nappies on the garden. No?

Keris Stainton
http://www.keris-stainton.com
http://www.fiveminutespeace.co.uk

Slopsville – Our baby weaning diary. Week Nine. ish.

laura — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 14:54:05 +0000

Have you seen the episode of Friends in which Joey goes out on a date and gets upset with the woman because she takes chips off his plate? He explains his horror by repeating, “Joey doesn’t share food!” Well, my Joe (I’m not calling him ‘Joey’ even for the purposes of this story, sorry) doesn’t share food either.

Like Joey Tribbiani, Joe will happily, enthusiastically, insistently share other people’s food – going so far as to snatch it out of your mouth – but woe betide you if you try and take his.

But, I hear you cry, why would you take food from a baby? I’m not talking about snatching the rusk from his gums, but if I’m feeding him and I, say, lick my finger (which I do frequently, automatically) he hits the roof. Sometimes he kind of growls at me, other times (if he’s particularly hungry) he is likely to burst into tears.

He’s been like this since he started on solids. A few weeks ago, at my aunt’s house, she started to feed Joe an egg custard tart. She spooned out the custard and he snaffled it, completely overexcited. I then took the pastry since he was too young to eat it and, the minute I picked it up, he burst into noisy tears. And Joe’s not a crier at all. In fact, now that I think about it, he only ever really cries about food.

To be fair to him, I can understand it. I suppose it must be like being on a diet while everyone else is indulging in cake. I’d cry about that too.

–
Keris Stainton

http://www.keris-stainton.com
http://www.fiveminutespeace.co.uk

Slopsville – our baby weaning diary. Week Eight.

laura — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 12:55:00 +0000

It probably won’t come as a shock to you that Joe is a messy eater. You’ve seen his picture. And babies aren’t exactly known for their table manners anyway, are they? But Joe takes messy eating to the next level. He dials messy eating up to 11. He laughs in the face of messy eating and then hurls it down the front of my top.

Harry was a messy eater too, of course. I’ve got the traditional pictures of his face smeared with yoghurt, his fingers covered in chocolate, but Joe get his food all over his face, his hands, his clothes, the highchair, the floor and any nearby (and not so nearby – the kid’s got some reach) toys. I have picked partially chewed rice cake out of his ears, his nose, his nappy and my bra. Almost everything in the lounge has a light crusting of Weetabix (which, as any parent knows, is one of the world’s most adhesive substances).

Sometimes he’s doing quite well, I’m managing to scrape the excess off his face and shove it back in his mouth, he’s managing to keep his hands (or his feet) out of the way and then, apparently just to mix things up a little, he’ll sneeze. And you know what happens when you sneeze with a mouthful of, say, pea and pear puree, don’t you? It ain’t pretty. But what was I thinking getting a beige carpet with kids anyway.

And now that Joe’s learned what fun it is to drop things off the side of his highchair, his favourite game is to fling something – usually something wet and disgusting – and then wait for me to bend to pick it up before dropping another, splat on the back of my neck.

At a family wedding this weekend, I was feeding Joe and a cousin said, “Don’t you use a bib?” Well, we did. We used to conscientiously tug a bib over Joe’s head at every feed. The bib would get covered in food and then, when we took it off, we’d find that he’d somehow managed to cover his clothes *under* the bib too. And of course, he’d always save that last bit of sicking up for just after we’d taken the bib off. No matter how long we left it. What we need is a baby Hazmat suit. And one for me. And plastic sheeting for the carpet. And furniture. But it hardly seems worth the effort.

So we keep baby wipes to hand at all times and ignore the rest of the mess. And let’s face it, there are worse things in life than a carrot crunchy in the cleavage.

–
Keris Stainton

http://www.keris-stainton.com
http://www.fiveminutespeace.co.uk

Slopsville – our baby weaning diary. Week Seven.

laura — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 09:23:42 +0000

We got in from a long day visiting family (including my dad in hospital). Joe had barely slept all day (and Joe usually sleeps for at least – at LEAST – four hours a day) so I wanted to get him to bed fairly swiftly, but he also needed to eat something.

The previous day, he’d had some mixed berries that I’d mixed with some of his cereal. And he’d loved it. So we made it for him again and he wolfed it down. I kept him up a little longer to give it time to digest. He got the hiccups. Once the hiccups had gone, I popped him in bed and all was quiet.

“Bless,” David said, “he was so tired.” And then he went to check on Joe and I heard a plaintive cry (from David, not Joe). I ran upstairs to find David, looking panicky, cudding Joe, who was smiling away, despite the fact that both of them were covered in sick. Very berry-looking sick.

David stripped Joe off while I ran him a bath (Joe, not David). While I bathed him, David took Joe’s bedding – sheet, blanket, sleeping bag, sleepsuit – and put it in the wash. Once Joe was all clean and happy, we got him dried, dressed, in a new sleeping bag, back in bed.

I put Harry in bed and then went to check on Joe again. He was in his sleeping position (basically the recovery position, which is how both Harry and I also sleep), thumb in his mouth, just drifting off. But I thought I saw something near his face, so I reached in… yep. More sick. I lifted Joe out to find a huge pile of sick behind where his head had been. It was down his neck, inside his babygro, all over the back of his head, in his ear. And he’d been just about to go to sleep anyway, bless him.

Another full change and he was back in bed, with David and me checking on him about every five minutes.

And then the guilt started. Were the berries too rich? Isn’t he supposed to have berries yet? Are we not washing his spoons and dishes well enough? Should we still be sterilising them? (Rather than just, you know, licking them.) (Not that that’s the *only* way I clean his spoons.) (Most of the time.)

And then, during the night Joe woke up about every hour. I breastfed him, he cried, he flailed about, he chewed his fist. We realised, yes, it was the teeth. And then I remembered that when we went on holiday a few weeks ago we had a couple of nights of Joe crying and flailing and clearly teething and also, yes, throwing up. After which I’d felt all guilty about what he’d eaten and whether his spoons had been cleaned properly and whether I should be sterilising stuff, etc.

And so this column has a moral. Oh yes, a moral. And that’s to trust yourself. I didn’t question anything I was feeding Joe or anything I was doing until he got sick. And then I questioned everything. But it wasn’t my fault. And (for once) it wasn’t even my husband’s. It was just one of those baby things that come along and surprise you. Every single sodding time.

–
Keris Stainton

http://www.keris-stainton.com
http://www.fiveminutespeace.co.uk

Slopsville – our baby weaning diary. Week Six.

laura — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 08:07:16 +0000

What do kippers, papaya, Kitkats, mashed potato, tuna, mango, yoghurt, broccoli, Weetabix, toast, cheese, peaches, salmon, scrambled egg, Philadelphia, and chocolate Buttons have in common? No, that’s not my hangover diet (well, take away the fruit/veg, add a packet of Boasters and fourteen cups of tea and it is, actually), it’s a list of the foods seven-month-old Joe has tried in the past couple of weeks.

I’m not ashamed to admit I’d started to fret about the fact that I hadn’t really cooked anything for Joe. Okay, I hadn’t *cooked* anything for him at all. I had mashed some fruit and… that was all. Joe and I were both perfectly happy with the fresh fruit combined with the Organix pots and packets (and breastfeeding), but I knew that I had to cook something sometime. But what..?

And then I was sent an Annabel Karmel book in which the author pointed out that, at Joe’s age, he could pretty much eat anything the rest of us humans eat. It was a revelation! Scrambled eggs? Had never occurred to me! Yoghurt? I thought he had to be one before he could have cows’ milk (turns out you have to be one to drink it, but can cook with it sooner). Toast? But, um, he hasn’t got any teeth.

The very same day I started reading the book, we were round at my in-laws and I mentioned to my mother-in-law that Joe could now eat scrambled egg. Whereas I had thought, “Hmm, scrambled egg. I’ll make that for him one of these days. If we’ve got any eggs”, she said, “Should I make it now?” and was spooning it into Joe’s gob less than ten minutes later. And, blimey, was Joe grateful. I want to say that he sat, beak opening like a baby bird, but in light of what he was eating that might be insensitive. Still, he loved it. But I’m not sure it loved him, since that night’s sleep was, I think, the most unhappy and disturbed of his life so far. He was inconsolable. It might be a coincidence and his teeth were giving him gyp, but he won’t be having egg again for a while.

Everything else he has been thrilled by. He likes to have a combination of something sloppy – he loves mashed potato with fish and Philadelphia stirred in – and something crunchy (which makes me suspect those peggies again) and so he usually eats with an Organix rice cake (or two) (he likes the flavoured ones) clutched in his fists. And yesterday I bought (yes, bought!) Organix Crunchy Carrot Sticks and he LOVES them. I love watching him eat them too since he can hold them and crunch them really well. It makes him look so grown up.

It’s frightening really. With Harry, every new eating stage was a stress-fest I could barely cope with. With Joe, he’s changing so fast that I can hardly keep up. He’ll be cooking for me soon.

–
Keris Stainton

http://www.keris-stainton.com
http://www.fiveminutespeace.co.uk

Slopsville – Our Baby Weaning Diary. Week Five.

laura — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 20:30:56 +0000

This week I’d been planning on writing about all the many and varied foods Joe has tried, but then we went away for a week and I found something else to write about…

On the way home, we’d planned to stop and visit some friends and this meant we had to take the M25. Yes, I know. We got on to the M25. We saw a sign. There was a broken down vehicle and traffic was backed up from where we just got on… to where we planned to get off. Cheers, Sod and your stupid law. The signs said 40, but the traffic was going much, much slower. Thankfully, both boys were asleep. To begin with.

Harry woke first, saying, sleepily, “Are we there?” Then Joe woke, saying, lustily, “FEED ME! FEED ME RIGHT NOW! WHERE ARE YOU? I CAN’T SEE YOU! FEED ME FEED ME FEED ME!” “Won’t be long, sweetie,” I cooed, hissing, “Give him his caterpillar!” to Harry. Joe chewed on his caterpillar for just long enough to realise that NO MILK WAS COMING OUT OF IT and started to yell again. To be fair to him, he wasn’t crying (is there anything worse than being stuck in a car with a distressed baby?), but he certainly wasn’t happy. And we knew that he had to be hungry.

Kneeling on my seat, I pulled my seatbelt around my back and reached over to hand Joe an Organix Crunchy Ring. He’s been getting more and more adept at eating them by himself, holding them over his thumb and gumming away until they dissolve, but I still wasn’t happy to have him eating something so solid when I couldn’t see his face (you know, to check on that old choking thing). So I knelt and I leaned and Joe ate the last two corn rings. Happily. Yes, the last two.

Of course, that wasn’t the only food I had for Joe. I’m not an idiot. I had a couple of Organix pots – his favourite, in fact: Fruity Chicken. Only they were in the boot. And we were on the motorway. Harry had a pear, so I snaffled that and, peeling it with my teeth, mashed it in a little pot I’d had the foresight to buy, clean and stash in Joe’s nappy bag. Kneeling on the seat again, I leaned over and poked the spoon in the area I assumed Joe’s mouth to be. “Is he eating it?” I asked Harry. “Yeah,” said Harry, vaguely, staring out of the window. It wouldn’t do. There was only one thing for it. I had to climb over.

Putting the lid on the pot (yes, I had a pot and a lid! Go me!), I stashed the spoon in a sterile location (oh okay, my own mouth) and squeezed between the front seats, dropping into the meagre space between the two car seats. Sideways (because I certainly wouldn’t fit widthways) and landing on Harry’s arm. Joe, at least, was delighted to see me, giving me a gummy grin, into which I shoved more pear. Which dribbled back out. Along with the rest of the pear I’d fed him from the front which, for some unknown reason, he’d apparently decided to store in his cheeks until he could impress me with his new regurgitation skills. Great.

For the next half hour, Joe beamed, chunks of pear dropping out with every smile (I’m telling you, LOADS more came out than I’d put in), Harry nursed his crushed arm, David stewed and fumed quietly and I wrote this blog post in my head. It was like therapy. So thanks.

–
Keris Stainton

http://www.keris-stainton.com
http://www.fiveminutespeace.co.uk

Slopsville – Our Baby Weaning Diary. Week Four.

laura — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 00:30:36 +0000

In Catherine Newman’s gorgeous book Waiting for Birdy (if you haven’t read it, get hold of a copy as soon as you feasibly can, seriously), she describes an occasion when her young son, Ben, choked on a “Lifesaver” (that’s a Polo to us Brits). She writes that Ben was less worried about choking and more that his mother would never give him a Lifesaver again. “Indeed,” she says, “I never will.”

I was the same the first time I gave my eldest son, Harry, an apple. Even though he was quite old and the apple was chopped into teeny pieces, he still choked. And he’d been enjoying it so much that, even as he was choking, he was opening his mouth and reaching for more apple. “Not likely, buddy,” I thought after the partialy digested apple had shot out of his mouth and across the room. “You can eat apple when you’re living under your own roof, not mine.”

But somehow, with Joe, I’d managed to forget about the risks of choking. That is until a recent chat with my health visitor who said the following: “It’s different with a second child. One day, your older son WILL give Joe something and he WILL choke and this is what you do…” As she mimed putting a baby over her knee and patting between its shoulder-blades, I sat wide-eyed and terrified. He WILL choke. Not that he might or he could, but he WILL. I felt like we’d been cursed.

So when Organix sent over some second stage food (with lumpy bits!) and finger foods (solids that are actually, you know, solid!), I laughed hollowly and shoved them to the back of the cupboard. A couple of weeks went by and I realised that I’d have to give Joe something solid eventually or, you know, social services might have to get involved.

Because Joe is Joe, I thought he’d appreciate a biscuit. So, primed for disaster, I gave him an Organix rusk type biscuit, holding it so that only about half a centimetre could actually go in his mouth. He grabbed it with both hands and shoved it in whole. I yanked it out. This went on for a while. David got the camera and filmed. After about ten minutes, my hands, Joe’s face (and hands… and clothes) and the sofa were covered in mushed up, soggy, biscuit. And Joe was beaming. And, more importantly, still alive.

Next I tried him with a rice cake. The first one went down well. I would bet good money that never in the history of food has a rice cake been eaten with such expressions of joy. But the next time I offered him one, it seemed he’d had time to reflect and had come to the same realisation as the rest of us: rice cakes taste of nothing. He wouldn’t even try it.

I realise this is quite a long column so I’ll have to continue ‘adventures in choking’ next week, but I want to say just one more thing before I go. It seems that the body is designed to actually prevent one from choking. To death, I mean. Well, as best it can. Because on the few occasions that Joe has actually suddenly stopped chewing and gone a bit red and wide-eyed, in the time it’s taken me to think, “Oh my god! He’s choking!” he’s coughed and whatever was troubling him has shot out. Funny, that.

–
Keris Stainton

http://www.keris-stainton.com

http://www.fiveminutespeace.co.uk