Food fit for Kings

Literally.

A while back, I mentioned that we (I say ‘we’, but you’re to read: Claire) had been busy making pre-made food for Jack.

Well, this hasn’t really stopped.  Mass food production for Jack increased slightly, in that we had been making bigger portions for him as he grew, but since then, we’ve been making food for Oliver now too.  Some are some of the old favourites that we used to make for Jack when he was a baby (and still do but in a bigger form), but in addition, there’s a few new recipes too.

But in case you’re thinking this is mushed-up, gunky, bad-tasting baby fast-food, I can categorically assure you that this is not.

The meals that Claire’s been making are absolutely fantastic meals that an adult would enjoy.  The only obvious difference, is that for Oliver being a young ‘un with only a few front teeth to chew with, they’ve been blended to make it easier for him.  Jack’s food is part-blended, but only to mix the stuff together thoroughly after cooking.

Other than that, the Salmon Surprise, Beef Stew, Sweet and Sour Chicken, Thai Green Curry, King Prawn Korma and Spaghetti Carbonara are fantastic meals with quality, fresh, ingredients. No crap here.

Admittedly, the recipes are modified slightly such that there’s no added salt or sugar in them, but I’ve tried almost all of them along the way, and I would certainly eat them.

Basically, the food is cooked en-mass, and then divided up into portion-sized bowls or ice-bricks and then frozen.  All we need to do then, is get them out to defrost in-time for the boys, and re-heat them before each meal in the microwave.  It makes a *huge* difference, as when they’re getting hungry and ready for food still at the table, we’ve got them some great, healthy and nutritious meals out that they can have in front of them in seconds. Otherwise, we’d be scrambling to give them something to tide them over until we’d manage to rustle up something each meal-time, with breakfast being no different.

Here’s a quick photo I took just the other night when I was getting their food out for the next day:

Top left, is Salmon Surprise and Potato, in larger portion size for Jack’s evening meal. Directly below this, is a portion of Apple, Pear and Blueberry for Jack’s evening dessert. 

In the middle at the top in the green bowl, are three ‘bricks’ Beef Stew and Sweet Potato for Master Oliver’s evening meal, with the orange bowl to the right having two bricks of Peach, Pear and Strawberries for his dessert.

Centre-shot, is Oliver’s lunch, which is one brick of Salmon Surprise and one of mixed Potato. His dessert for this meal was not shown, but was two bricks of Apple and Rhubarb.

At the bottom of the photos, the two bowls side-by-side have a single brick for each Jack and Oliver, of Summer Fruits – these are the fruit bases that we then add their breakfast, such as muesli, Weetabix or other basic cereals to.  Oliver is still having full-fat milk with his breakfast, whilst Jack has progressed onto semi-skimmed.  Additionally, with their breakfast, the boys will have a small pile of raisins – Jack will mix his into his breakfast whilst Oliver currently chews some, slimes others and flings the rest across the kitchen floor.

As we feed Oliver first, due to the sheer noise he makes as a young Rigby, he’s pretty much done when we’re ready to eat our meals, whether it’s breakfast, lunch or tea.  In this case, we give him more food that he can feed himself, such as cut grapes, strawberries, blueberries (his current favourite), raisins, chopped apple or pear, or even cherries, but these are a bit more tricky as we have to de-pip them first.

We are most certainly happy that they’re eating good food. Yes, some, if not a lot, gets wasted. Some gets slapped sideways onto the kitchen cupboards by an over-excited 1 year old, (Oliver, I’m looking at you here) and some just gets left.  But as we’ve got personal investment other than money in the food that they’re eating, we’re keen that they eat this first. If Jack is still wanting more food after his meal, then we’ll certainly allow him treats, knowing that he’s eaten well first.  But he’s more than aware that if he doesn’t eat his first meal, then he’ll not be getting anything else, which was a problem initially, but not any more.

Oliver is 90% mobile!

No, he doesn’t have a mobile phone (yet).

More importantly, he’s very nearly there with his walking!

He’s been able to pull himself up the sofa and sideways-walk along it for a little while now, but also in the past day or two, he’s learning to let go of something that doesn’t move and is learning to walk to other inanimate objects!

Of course, we’re able to position him and direct him to the open arms of another person awaiting his arrival, and he’ll (mostly) get there without landing on his face; but when he **lets go** of something on his own accord, in favour of getting something or going somewhere, that is actually quite amazing to watch.

It’s also worrying too, as the more these sprogs are able to move, the quicker you have to be OR the more stuff you have to have moved out of reach in advance. Or both, usually.

Fields.

The boys and I were driving over to see my parents on a quiet Sunday morning.

Oliver: “Blaa-gaah”

Jack: “Daddy, that means ‘field’.”

Me: “Oh right. So, why doesn’t Oliver just say ‘field’ then?”

…

…

Jack “Because he can’t speak our language yet.”

Genius.

Night time milk feeds

I seem to remember with Jack there being this almost invisible cut-off date at which we stopped feeding him milk by a bottle in his bedroom before putting him down to sleep each night. I don't, however, remember thinking twice about it, nor feeling any sort of loss about not doing it anymore.

This evening, it crossed my mind, whilst feeding a now-one-year old, Oliver.

As much of a chore as it is to make bottles of what I call 'plastic milk', (that is, powdered milk) and everything that goes with it, such as washing/sterilising/etc, it's actually... relaxing.

Here's what I mean to clarify that; Assuming that you can calm a screaming hungry toddler down in the dead of night which is the whole reason that you're there in the lion's den, the actual act of feeding a small, innocent and, to be fair, helpless/feeble child and to then lay them softly back into their cot ideally fast asleep, is quite gratifying.

Tonight, and no different from most nights that I feed him, Oliver was laying on my chest, face upwards, drinking from his bottle of plastic milk, eyes closed and arms open wide. His head rested on my shoulder, almost ear-to-ear, and occasionally stopping the sucking of milk, but otherwise, chomping though as though this was his first feed in weeks. Basically, his complete and utter trust/faith/love in me, as a parent, is personified right there.

And that's when I thought about it.

"Will I miss this moment?"

"Will I forget how peaceful he sounds or how relaxed he and I both are (aside from listening to the noise of moving liquid just millimetres away from my ear or constantly smelling the foulness of the previously-powder-now-stinky formula milk)?"

"Should I make more of a mental note to remember these details, for when he's older and pestering me for money for something?"

Hmm. Maybe.

Oli, The Daywalker

My boy, Oliver, is hereby unofficially declared a ‘Daywalker’ - if you’ve never seen the movie trilogy ‘Blade’, then this might not mean much to you.

In the movie, there are people. You know, regular people that sleep at night and do stuff during the day.

There are, of course, also vampires in this particular movie. Those are the people that sleep during the day and do stuff, namely bite/kill people for blood, during the night like any good vampire should.

Oliver, however, is a daywalker like Blade, the star of the movie;  Blade is a ‘special’ individual, as he does all the nocturnal stuff that vampires do, but also works well in sunlight.  Here’s why they’re similar:

The past couple of days, young Master Rigby has been going almost all day without need for a sleep. (Bearing in mind he’s not a year old, this is a problem!!) Then, at night time, he is *still* waking multiple times throughout the night, despite being 9 or so months old. So, without need for fangs and vampire-like gory stuff, he’s slowly killing his folks off, as we’re outright knackered come the morning. This makes work a bit… different, as I don’t think that the wife and I have ever had so little sleep when Jack was this age.

So, in my eyes… daywalker.

He’s 100% bubbly, playful fun during the day though, don’t get me wrong. And he’s always got a smile for his big-bro, Jack, which is certainly helpful, as Jack does like to show-off in front of Oliver to get a giggly-based reaction from the dribbly tot.

In all honesty, it could be that he’s teething or something.  He’s had an ear infection or two of late, so that probably hasn’t helped things, but he is getting to the age of sprouting a tooth or two. I just hope that all this noise and effort means that ten are coming through at the same time, and they’re fully grown adult teeth, as I’m sure I’d be disappointed if there was just one tiny little baby tooth coming through causing all of this upset, as the problem is that when he wakes up, he kicks off big-time and gets himself in a right little state, which takes a while to calm him down.

But Claire and I do consider a night that he wakes just once as a good night. Even better if he goes straight back to sleep immediately after having a drop of milk.

Hey ho. Kids, eh? Just goes to show that you simply can’t use the first child as a benchmark for the second.

Jack-Joke

After seeing a joke on TV/online about the recent possible discovery of the Higgs Boson particles, I told Claire, Jack and Oliver it over evening tea.

A Higgs Boson walks into a church and the vicar shouts “Out! We don’t allow Higgs Bosons in here!”. To which the Higgs Boson replies “But, without me, how do you have MASS??”

Anyway, I thought it was funny; they didn’t.

Days later, and totally out of the blue, Jack has interpreted the joke into:

A Higg Boson walks into the church and the vicar says “GET OOOUUUUTTTTTTT! You’re not allowed in here!!”

Made us wet ourselves. Literally.

7 Months and Chicken Pox!

Unbelievably so, it’s been AGES since I’ve written anything about the boys, Jack and Oli. I think blogging managed to be something that I’ve let run away from me, in the midst of now having two of the little blighters in the house.

I’ll try to make a more conscious effort in future, as I really want to have a record of their goings-on, but to be fair, there’s not a massive amount of time left in the month!

So, right now, Jack is 3.5 yrs old (ish) and Oliver is about 7 months old.

Oliver is a real bundled of smiles and dribble wrapped up in baby clothes – since he was very small, the drool has simply POURED out of his mouth, but not that he’s teething or anything, but just got the setting on maximum for it.  As such, he’s always wearing a bib, and goes through easily ten in a day, as they become soaked to the point of when you try to wipe the next bit dribble away, you’re actually making more of face wet!

He’s still not sleeping through the night, which is a real kicker for his mum and I. We were sort of thinking that we were making some real progress in convincing ol’ blondy that he could survive longer sleeping patterns, but just as he’s getting there, he’s gone and caught Chicken Pox. Not a massive surprise, as Claire’s been making them both share time/air with other infected nippers, to try and get it before school starts again, and before Claire has to return to work after maternity leave.  Jack seems immune to it, which is totally odd, but Oli is absolutely plastered in spots, to the point that his head is a Braille horror story. In the past day or so, he’s grown some pox-spots in or near his ears, which have made them so sensitive that Superman would worry.  So much so, he gets really upset if we accidentally breathe upon it from a distance. Tears. Screams. Not good. Especially at 5 am, which he’s taken to waking up at, permanently. 

He’s waking around midnight/1am and crying and screaming himself into a state – Claire’s taken the brunt of these Oli-poundings, but the truth is, he’s awake and thrashing around for about an hour before he can be tempted into having some milk and going back to sleep.

As you can imagine, with Oli waking at midnight and then again at five, it’s not leaving any of us any real time to get some proper sleep, but although you get used to it as a new parent, 7 months is really starting too drag on a bit, young Master Rigby!! (hint hint!)

Oli’s on the tipping point, too, of crawling which is so funny to watch. He’s been able to rolly-polly around the floor by himself and sit up-right for a while now, and he can wiggle himself into the baby-crawling position, and then he rocks himself forwards and backwards as though he’s teasing us. Then he decks-it on to his front and then slams his out-stretched arms down in front of him, and pulls the world towards him on his tummy, whilst kicking his legs like he’s in the swimming pool behind him.  This is a bit different from Jack, as he used to do the the full-on army/commando crawl, and then converted this straight into walking; so we were robbed of the crawling-baby back then. Maybe Oli will be the one to enlighten us as to this elusive art?

Jack – When he’s in the company of Oliver, he’s usually either all over him, by cuddling, kissing or pulling at arms/legs/etc (affectionately – mostly!) or he’s dancing or waving his arms whilst talking Whale-speak to him. Either way, Oli has nothing but smiles and ‘coo’s for Jack, his constant entertainer.

Occasionally, Jack does get a taste of the green-eyed monster though, although this tends to be when Jack is a bit tired and aware that he’s not the centre of attention at that particular moment.  But to be fair, it’s not an easy thing to judge, as to when to show Jack the attention that he’s craving, and when not to, as to try to teach him that our little family has grown by 133% since Oli’s arrived in town.

Jack is growing and learning new things all the time. He’s recently been into historical events such as The Titanic and Cook’s HMS Endeavour, as well as dinosaurs, Range Rovers, Land Cruisers and the like.  His vocabulary is expanding massively, and sometimes, this totally catches me off-guard when he says something using a word that I didn’t know he knew. Or, even funnier, is when he re-uses something that we’ve said but in the wrong context, as he’s just relaying words.  Little star.

In September, Jack moves onto the next part of his pre-school stuff, and will be attending the local school for three hours in the mornings, five days a week.  Up until the 6 weeks (!!) holidays, he’s been going to pre-school for three hours in the afternoon.