Travel, Solid Food, but, Most of All, an Update.

The squeals haven't stopped. Actually, they've gotten louder and higher-pitched. Our baby would make a terrific fire alarm.

I'm sorry for being away for so long. Life intervened and blogging fell to the wayside.

A lot's happened in the interim. We took a long overseas flight with the baby to visit family in my mother's home country. Worth every moment, even if the little one was wide awake for most of the flight. She cried more than she would on the ground but not nearly as much as we'd feared. Packing for her was a pain - car seat, diaper bag, clothes, toys - but we managed fairly well. All her stuff, all our stuff, and all carried on. Not bad, if I may say so.

The little one is also transitioning to solid food. My wife has been making it at home, which saves us a lot of money and, she says, it isn't nearly as hard it seems. All you need is a steamer or microwave, a blender, and something to store it in. Take whatever you want to serve the baby - broccoli, cabbage, peppers, cucumbers, apricots, pears, anything at all - steam the daylights out of it, toss it in the blender, and pour into the tray.

Oh, right, the tray.

We have ice cube trays specially designed to hold one-ounce servings of frozen breast milk. We made regular use of them when my wife was pumping and now use them to store frozen baby food. Once the blocks are frozen, we dump them into a large Ziploc bag and freeze another batch.

Some foods, of course, are wetter than others and can be easily thickened with a little bit of infant-formulated dry rice or grain cereal. With foods that are thicker, like the chicken breasts my wife boiled before pureeing them, adding a matching flavor like applesauce makes all the difference. Using formula or breastmilk also works very well.

Our little one did have some early issues with constipation, which worried us for a while until my wife - sensing a theme yet? - hit on a terrific idea. We got some prune juice, poured a quick splash of an ounce or so into a sippy cup, and cut it with water. Our baby loves it, probably because it's the sweetest thing we let her drink. A brilliant move on my sweetie's part.

Finally, the baby is also starting to crawl. She's not moving from place to place yet but, any day now, she'll be motoring along. As of right now, she rolls from place to place with the ease of a bicycle tire and can get up on all fours. Instead of going forward, though, she pushes herself backwards and starts crying in frustration.

Is it wrong that we find that funny?

She taller now, and heavier, too, of course, and so far she's been sick only once. A mild cold clogged her up for a couple of days back in January but a visit to her doctor assured us that it wasn't H1N1, cystic fibrosis, or some other dread disease. It's amazing how quickly we assume the worst when our kids are sick.

So, again, I'm sorry for the long wait between posts. My goal is to post at least one update a week. And don't hesitate to hold me to it.