Steps and Baby Love

Our Bailey is a walker. She has now taken multiple steps on her own multiple times. The first reported steps were at daycare, but since then (that was on Tuesday the 19th), she's taken several steps for both of us. Deliberate steps...not accidental ones. She will still always choose crawling as her means of transportation, but not for long. Her little legs are so cute.

Bailey's been a bundle of baby love recently. She just seems to be happy and comfortable in her world. Her schedule is predictable, she gets lots of time with each of us individually and together, she is sleeping great at night (between 10 1/2 and 11 1/2 hours of uninterrupted sleep at a time), and she is getting lots of of yummy, healthy food. She is growing, learning and moving rapidly toward her first birthday.

Speaking of food. Every morning, we drop Bailey off at daycare. We start the day by putting her in one of the high chairs and getting her started on breakfast. We do the same thing every day (our girl likes her schedule). Usually breakfast is a bunch of fresh fruit and a blueberry waffle (one of the Kashi kinds with lots of fiber and protein). Sometimes it's cereal, but not often. We are starting to give her some egg...but it's hard to bring egg to daycare. Anyway. Usually fresh fruit salad (comprised of sliced fresh blueberries, fresh strawberries, apples that we've boiled slightly to soften them up, pears that have been boiled slightly and sometimes raspberries or blackberries). Every day there are a couple of other children there at the same time, being fed by the childcare folks. As far as I can tell, no other parents of the pre-toddlers make their children food like we do. The facility provides breakfast, lunch and snacks...we just don't like what they serve or how the prepare it. We recently learned that they cook their carrots in a sugar water solution to get the kids to eat them. NOT what we want Bailey to be eating. So we have strict rules in place that she is not to be fed ANYTHING that we don't provide. Never. Nothing. I digress...anyway - so these other kids are being fed. Want to know what they are eating?? Graham crackers and fruit loops. Seriously. That is their morning breakfast. Have you ever looked at the ingredient list in regular graham crackers and fruit loops? The amount of sugar alone that these children are eating to start their day is HORRIBLE. And usually, it's accompanied by juice. JUICE!!! Which might as well be soda it is so horrible.

Anyway - every morning, the daycare providers say, "Bailey, you are so lucky." One day, the father of one of the other children saw me putting the fresh fruit on Bailey's tray and asked me if I actually cut the fruit up myself. LOL. After I answered "yes" he commented that it just takes so much time.

*sigh*

Here's my rant - you bet it takes time. Kelly and I barely see each other through the week. We work split shifts so that Bailey spends as little time in childcare as possible. The person who is at home in the evening is tasked with making her food for the next day, making dinner, hand-washing bottles, picking up, entertaining the child and getting our lunches for the next day ready. It's fucking work. Our day beings at 4:00 AM just so that we get a few minutes of personal space before everything else starts. We commute constantly.

BUT...here's the thing. This is what we signed up for. I am not going to feed my kid a bunch of shit just because it's convenient. I'm not going to cut corners and be okay with fucking up her schedule just because my life is busy. It's not about me. It's not about Kelly. It's about raising Bailey and doing our very best with what we have to offer.

So...yes, it takes a while to cut up the fruit. Every Sunday I spend a couple of hours cutting broccoli, carrots and cauliflower and getting it steamed for her. So that she'll have fresh veggies to take with her to daycare each day. You bet it's work. It's lots of work. But I do it because I'm a good mother and because Bailey deserve that.

And man, I'd feel like shit if I knew that Bailey was being fed graham crackers and fruit loops.