The Blueberry Quota

It is a well-known fact around these parts that Jacob loves blueberries. When we got him tested for allergies, we learned that berries were among the seemingly few foods that did not mess with his system. And thank goodness! While we otherwise wouldn’t have introduced them for another couple of months, since that fateful day, he has had them for breakfast almost every single day. For his birthday I made him blueberry cupcakes with blueberry frosting, topped with—you guessed it—blueberries.

 

Recently I’ve started to wonder if we’re in too much of a rut with what we eat for breakfast, lunch, snacks, and even dinner. The restrictions on what Jacob and I can eat make meal planning challenging, and once I’ve found something that works, it’s too easy to just stick with it.

 

As healthy as blueberries are, they’re not the be-all, end-all of nutrition, and especially now that Jacob’s almost weaned, I’m ever more aware of how balanced his meals are. Or are not. Plus, variety is the spice of life, right?

 

So this week I tried to mix it up. I cut up some melon and peaches and offered those to Jacob at breakfast. I added some blueberries in, too, as long as we had them. But by Tuesday, we’d run out. The ones at the store Wednesday were already kind of fuzzy, so I held off. The raspberries looked good—to me at least—but Thursday morning, Jacob wasn’t so interested. It wasn’t until that afternoon that I found some good ones at the store.

 

After a rough day of some sniffles, no naps, and yet another mysterious (but not so serious) allergic reaction, Jacob wasn’t really thrilled about dinner. I tried to give him some pasta with chicken and vegetables, but for the second night in a row, that wasn’t really a go either. Call it mommy intuition or call it the grace of God, but my reaction was to go to the fridge and grab the blueberries. And man, oh man, did that kid gobble them up. He ate about half the package, as well as a few sweet potato fries, and that was dinner.

 

It seems his blueberry quota hadn’t been fulfilled, and nothing else would suffice.

 

Needless to say, I’ve learned my lesson: always have blueberries on hand. Variety may be the spice of life, but it’s nothing without the cherry—or berry—on top.

 

 

The Benefits of Being a Short Mom

I am not the only one to wonder how such a large child was born of such average to small parents. At Jacob’s one-month well visit, the pediatrician looked at Jacob, looked at me, and presumed that John must be a big guy. At just five-ten and lean, he’s not really much larger than average.

During Jacob’s first year, it was humorous to me to share either his age or his birth weight with curious strangers. When I went to the nursing class at the hospital before we were discharged, I was the smallest woman in the room—and I had the largest baby. I remember telling someone that he was three weeks old when they guessed he was three months. By six months, the little man had fallen to the mid-range of his peers, but compared to me, he was still a big guy.

Check out our relative head sizes. Scary, no?

J-E-T-S! JETS! JETS! JETS!

Since Jacob’s started walking, I’ve found there is at least one benefit to being a shorter mom. Because he’s about half as tall as I am (can you believe that?!), when I reach down to hold his hands and support him as he walks, I don’t have to bend over. John, on the other hand, rightfully complains of an aching back after ten or fifteen minutes of this.

While I do sometimes have to go on my tippy toes to lie the little guy in his crib at night, I don’t have to bend too far to pick him up when he’s on the ground, and if he’s about to fall, I’m that much closer to catching him.

Considering I’ve never really appreciated the freedom to wear any size heel I want—an inch is plenty for me, thank you—I’m glad I’ve finally found the beauty of being short. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that I found it in motherhood!

Toddler Jacob

As freaked out as I was last week when I got my first “Your Toddler: Week 1” email from BabyCenter.com, I’d like to state for the record that toddler Jacob is, in a word, awesome.

It feels like a switch was flipped sometime last week, either in him or in me. Suddenly this little baby is a little boy, giggling, talking, and dancing even more than before. He chatters all day long, only stopping to laugh at things that, honestly, I can’t always find the humor in. He claps? He laughs. He turns the light off? He laughs. Other people might smile at these things, but to Jacob, they are worthy of a from-his-gut chortle. That’s right, my boy chortles.

His personality is more and more present every day. And while this means there are some temperamental moments, it also means that there are a lot of silly faces and a whole lot of hugs and kisses.

Maybe a lot of it is that we’re almost weaned (and almost back to cupcakes!) and still sleeping through the night, but this parenting thing really does just keep getting better and better.