Best Laid Plans

It's easy to make plans. To say that you aren't going to co-sleep. To say you are going to breastfeed until one year. To say you will only use cloth diapers. To say you will only feed your baby organic foods. To say you will never use cry-it-out or any other sleep training.  It's easy to make all kinds of statements before you have a kid or even while you're pregnant. I definitely believe there are mothers out that that actually follow through with what they swore they would (or in some cases wouldn't) do. I did say I wouldn't co-sleep and we actually did a few times and I hated it every time - Addie wasn't getting enough to sleep, resulting in her not sleeping well and being underweight and therefore struggling with maintaining her body temperature, it was warmer with us. I wanted to breastfeed until she was six months but I just didn't have enough so there's that. I never planned on cloth diapering nor feeding her organic foods. I don't even eat organic foods. I was okay with sleep training and it was one of the best thing we could have done. A has been sleeping through the night since like four/five months, 12 hours or so a night. I am definitely all for sleep training! I did plan to make her baby food, and well that didn't exactly happen as planned. And when I say not as planned, I mean it didn't happen.

I started making her purees for about two weeks then discovered it was so much easier to just buy them. Of course they ended up costing us a small fortune since we started giving her purees between five and six months and now just shy of 11 months we are finishing up what we have left of purees and moving to table foods for lunch. We moved to her table foods just shy of 10 months, but before it was all purees. Addison is also an eater, so she could go through quite a few of those little tubs of purees in the day. Plus, I have been making sure she has balanced meals so she gets veggies, proteins, and fruits with every meal. Too much? Well, that's just what I decided to do, right or wrong. I did what I thought was best and that's all we can do as mothers. So all this means that we needed a lot more purees per day, per week, per month. Making it costly.

I formed a plan, did some research, found a great website for making our own baby food, and started but that's about as far as I got. Am I bit disappointed in myself? Truthfully yes. I had no reason not to do it. Laziness I guess. I'm a stay-at-home mom. My kid plays independently like a champ. I go to the grocery store every week and buy fresh stuff for us, so why not buy fresh stuff for Addie, cook it up and puree it. Do I want to try making purees for baby #2 (no I'm not pregnant yet but we are planning on having another kid)? Yes. Will it happen? I'm not optimistic because I had no reason not to this time and all I had was Addie to take care of. But making purees for baby #2 means that I have two kids to take care of during the day. Or maybe I'll do baby-led weaning with baby #2. Who knows! It's hard to tell exactly what I will do the next time around. I do know that I know more now than I did when I first made all these plans to make her purees, which might make it easier the next time around because I am more confident in what I'm doing.

After saying everything I just about making plans to make purees, I am now saying that I plan on making her lunches. I have some great recipes for lunches now that we are switching to table foods for lunch. Instead of buying chicken nuggets or any other processed foods, I have some great recipes that I hope to make for her. And I hope to share these recipes with you all, but more than that I hope to actually make the things I want to make. Why am I being so picky about what she's eating? I wouldn't say I'm being picky. I just want her healthy. We eat healthy. Vegetables with every dinner, fruits with lunches. It's something I have talked about before in just our every day lives. When we eat healthy and non-processed foods, we feel better and that's something I want for Addison.

So there it is. More plans that I'm putting out there to the blog world. Maybe that'll make me more accountable. Maybe I'll enjoy making actual food more than purees. Maybe I'll end up buying chicken nuggets in the end after all. As long as she's eating, right? And trust me when I say that because the girl can eat so either way she'll be eating something!