Baby's first

Ramona and Kimchi wish all of you the very happiest of Halloweens.

Baby Food Chronicles

I've been making lots of these lately:

Spinach + sweet potato

Ev.er.y.one. extols the virtues of making your own baby food and I totally agree.  We've been able to control what ingredients get put in Ramona's food and we get to do it for a lot less cost and waste than buying prepackaged baby food from the grocery store.

"Mama, solids are clearly more delicious when spread all over your face.  Duh!"

So far, she's eaten: sweet potatoes, carrots, broccoli, zucchini, blueberries, avocado, banana, chicken, beef, apples, pears, beets, and a lot of other things that I'm probably forgetting.  You'll notice that she's not eating rice cereal and that's with purpose.  There's really no good reason to start a baby on rice cereal and with recent concerns about arsenic, it's something that we're glad we chose to skip.  At this point, she's eating two solid meals a day, but we're going to start giving her three: one pureed, one easy to mash chunks (think banana or avocado), and one with some meat to give her iron and zinc.

We've been using a variety of utensils to make her food, but lately we've been using a dim sum steamer basket and our mini food processor.  Awhile back, we broke our immersion blender, so Colby decided that it would be brilliant to get a commercial kitchen grade appliance.  I'm pretty sure that has more power than our weed whacker (which, admittedly, is not very powerful) and I basically have to stand on a stool to use it comfortably at the stove.   We'll use it if we're blending a lot of stuff at once, but for general purposes it's just not practical.

At first I thought that starting her on foods was going to be a very sad event because I'd no longer be her sole source of nutrition, but it's actually be really fun.  I can't imagine how awesome it is to try something as delicious as sweet potatoes for the first time ever, but I know that she's really enjoying herself.

Our dog, Kimchi, is also very happy that we've started Ramona on solids. ;)

Grad things

I haven't posted about grad school in awhile.  Basically, it's hard.  I mean, it's not like crazy hard in and of itself, but it's really hard to try to figure out how to balance being the best parent I can be and being at least an adequate grad student.  I've recently discovered the What Should We Call Grad School tumblr and it's hilarious and totally true.  I've crafted a little story that may or may not be based on true events.

post-qual

that constant feeling about grad school

when I realize all my other friends have jobs

two projects at the same time

every meeting with my PI

how I feel for choosing academia

why I don't socialize at socials

liberal arts

when someone asks me when I'm going to graduate