Lily & Leo

As I stand there for about 25 minutes, hunched over my kitchen island, with my neck straining from concentration, I meticulously peeled a bunch (literally) of grapes for my precious Lily pad for her snacks for the school week.  I thought back to when my mom would peel grapes for us, and boy do I have a new found appreciation for that!  Thank you mommy for all the little things you do just to keep me safe and happy!  Now as I do the same for Lily, I know one day she will appreciate all the little things I do for her.  Some fun facts about grapes are that they are very high in vitamins A and K and have lots of potassium and some calcium as well.  They are small but delicious healthy snacks for kids, and reduce risks of heart attacks, and reduces blood clots.  Grapes also can prevent muscular degeneration and cataract, associated with aging as well.  Also, 2.5 pounds of grapes make about 1 bottle of wine!  I guess that’s why they say 1 glass of wine a day is good for the heart (adult hearts at least)!  Anyways, I will do anything to make sure my precious Lily pad is healthy and happy, even if that means peeling grapes and cutting them in half for who knows how long!

More fruit snacks that Lily likes to eat are Kiwis and Tangerines and Cuties.  I won’t get into the science of it, but here are the benefits to kiwis!  They helps and improves your digestion with enzymes, helps manages blood pressure, boosts the immune system, helps clean out toxins, helps fight heart disease, creates alkaline balance (supplies a lot of minerals to balance out excess in acidic foods), which results in great skin!  Kiwis are easy to just peel and chop into little finger food bits that can be done ahead of time and packed ready to go for the next day!  Also, it adds a nice green to their colors of food!   Tangerines and Cuties talk a little more time.  I usually take out all the seeds in each piece of tangerine, and I tend to peel out most of the skin so that it’s not so chewy for Lily.  Cuties are a little easier since there’s no seeds and she doesn’t mind the skin compared to the tangerines.  Benefits of tangerines and cuties are that they’re loaded with flavonoids, which boast certain anticancer properties and can even prevent growth of cancerous cells and stop the growth of tumors!   They are loaded with Vitamin C and A, which helps the body heal wouds, and hold together tendons, ligaments, bones and blood vessels, and units of vitamin A also helps with the immune system, vision and much more.    Tangerines also have a lot of potassium that are important for the proper functioning of kidneys, muscles, nerves, heart and digestive system.  Although it takes some time to cut, chop, and peel these snacks for Lily, it’s important we take the time to make sure Lily gets the nutrients she needs.  It’s all about the little things!

Speaking of little, I wanted to share my most recent finds!  Check out these cute little drinking glasses that I got for Lily!  Her school at Le Port has them and when I saw it, I just had to find out where they got it from, and it’s from Ikea!!  I know what you’re thinking, it looks like a shot glass, but the glasses are beveled on the sides and that makes it easy for the tiny fingers to have a firm grasp around the glass!  I just had to get some for Lily and they were only $3 for a pack of 6!  Each glass holds a little less than 2 ounces of fluid!  It’s perfect for training Lily how to drink from a glass, and so far she’s able to hold it and even tried to drink from it a few times!  Half the time she tosses the water out of the glass but luckily it’s just water!  Also the nice part about it being glass is that she learns to hold something with real weight, and IF she drops it and it breaks, then she’ll learn about consequences (that’s the Montessori way).  So far, no broken glass yet, phew!  Also, her teacher put clear silicone caulking on the bottom to create a rubbery bottom to make it grip to the table surface and not be so slippery, brilliant!  So we did the same!  I also got these Duralex Gigogne glasses on Amazon that holds about 5.75 ounces of liquid for when she’s older, maybe next year! =)  These glasses are under $16 and come in a set of 16 as well.   They also have a slight ridge on it for little hands to easily grip as well!! Isn’t just so cute!  It’s a perfect size for our little Lily to master drinking from a glass!  Here’s a video of her using her baby size glass!

Also, my friend Luce gave me the recipe to make porridge, I mean it’s rather simple and I could have tried looking it up myself, but word of mouth is always the best kinds of recipes!  I recently made lily porridge with tofu, chicken and mixed veggies (corn, green beans, peas, and carrots) and added some chicken broth for flavoring, and boy does she love it!!  She was starting to want “REAL” food and so when I try to give her steamed veggies in it’s normal form, she would just spit it out.  So now I blend up the veggies and chicken, and mix it into her porridge and she eats it all up and gets a good amount of protein and vitamins all in one meal!  The best thing about porridge is you can put whatever you want in it, so this second batch I made has tofu, ground beef, and veggies!  I’m using ground beef cause her pediatrician says she needs more fats, so bring on the red meats!!  She’s getting so much better at feeding herself too, check out this super cute video of her eating yogurt all by herself!

Chicken Soup

One of our goals in parenting is to have a happy healthy baby, and so our goal is to make our own healthy foods for Lily!  We’ve started Lily on solids when she was just about 6 months old.  We made her some pureed butternut squash!  At first she was surprised by the foreign taste in her mouth, and kept pushing the spoon away and refused to eat.  So we tried again the next day, and it was a complete 180 and she was loving every bite!  She even opened her mouth for more, and leaned her head towards the spoon!  It’s so amazing the things she picks up on and so fast too!  We then gave her veggies like peas, carrots, leaks, etc, and fruits like pears and peaches and blueberries. We use our super wonderful Ninja Blender to puree her foods to a nice smooth consistency, then we freeze them in ice cube trays, then put them in labelled zip lock bags (thanks Chi Hai for this amazing tip!)

Mini Minestrone

So far the only foods she hasn’t been too fond of is avocados.  We will keep trying though!  Some of her favorite meals have been the more fancy ones like her chicken soup that had organic chicken breast, sweet potatoes, carrots, leaks, and chicken broth!  It does take some time to prepare her food, but you just prepare a bunch at once and the food will last a couple weeks!  Last night I made a few more batches of food for Lily, mini minestrone, and a fruit puree of blueberries, peaches, and pears, and it took a bit of time, and I would have loved to just relax on the couch and watch tv, especially after a long day’s work, but Lily’s health is more important to me.  I feel accomplished after I prepared all her food, and I feel great that I’m pushing myself to keep this up for Lily’s sake!  Also, it’s good practice to make sure Khoa and I eat healthy as well, to set an example for Lily, and to make sure we’re around for a long time to see Lily blossom!  Most of all, every time I feed Lily, I know I’m giving her the proper nutrients she needs to grow into a happy strong healthy person.  We are also starting Lily on finger foods as well, so she can practice her pincer grasps!  She was actually trying really hard to pick up the cut up pieces of banana with her thumb and pointer fingers and she was even able to put a piece in her mouth!  We are so proud of our little baby!  It’s exciting to see her develop these new milestones, but it’s so sad to see her grow up so fast!  *sigh… however, it’s a happy sadness, if that makes sense.   Seeing her eat is also super cute as well!!!  There’s just something about babies eating that is just so darn cute!  Check it out for yourself!