First haircut!

As many of you may already know from pictures of Jasmine throughout the past year (!), our little girl was born with a full head of hair. This is her on her two week birthday! Please excuse the cupcake hat I forced upon her.

Within the first 2 months, Jasmine lost a lot of the hair on the back and left side of her head. That tends to happen to babies since they mostly lay on their backs and a favored side. Jasmine’s hair loss however, did not stop her hair GROWTH. This means that while some parts of her head had very little hair, there were other parts that had very long hair. Case in point:

If the longer parts had stayed neatly tucked behind her ears AND if she managed to keep hair clips in for more than 2 minutes, we might have been able to last a few more months to uphold Jason’s preference that we wait until her first birthday to cut it for tradition’s sake. Alas, such was not the case and every day we woke up to a girl with the craziest looking hair. Therefore, despite Jason’s strong will, he broke down in November and conceded that we needed to get it cut.

Jason got to work doing some research to find a place that would do his little girl’s hair right and found Cozy’s Cuts. They have several convenient locations in NYC and specialize in children’s haircuts. The store is half toy store and half hair salon with fun little chairs for the kids to sit in. It was a quick and painless experience, if a bit pricey at around $35.

Here’s the AMAZING video that Jason took of the haircut in progress. As you can see, she did very well in the chair and didn’t cry or fuss one bit. I daresay she even enjoyed it a bit

Here are some pics of her in the middle of the haircut as well as a family pic of us afterward. The last picture is the next morning where you can really see the bob. She got a compliment on it at the coffee shop the very next day!!

It’s only been a month and a half since this haircut and our little over-achiever already needs another cut!

Jasmine’s First Halloween

This past Halloween was our first with a baby so an otherwise non-momentous day for Jason and I was very exciting. Since Jasmine can’t currently express her own opinion on what she wants to be dressed up as, we had to come up with something on our own. I turned to the Internet for suggestions and even debated putting together a costume myself. I’ve recently started sewing – in the interest of increasing my domesticity – but knew a costume was way out of my league.

While we initially really wanted to dress her up as some kind of food (Jason’s suggestion was a chili pepper, shocker I know), we thought it better to dress her up as something more relevant to HER likes. During my internet searches, I came across a very cute and high quality monkey costume by Paul Alma and since Jasmine has a deep love for her monkey, Mono, whom she sleeps with every night, it worked. Only one problem, it retails for almost $100 after tax and shipping.

Now I fancy myself a person who splurges once in a while, but to spend almost a hundred dollars on a costume my child will only be able to wear once and probably not for long was out of the question. That’s where Ebay and my quick-on-his-feet husband came in to save the day.

I checked if there were any auctions going on and just my luck, there was one ending in 2 minutes and the latest bid was only $25!! I tried logging in quickly but seeing as I haven’t used eBay in at 4+ years, had no idea what my password could be. A frantic call to Jason left me further disappointed when he said he didn’t know his either. I thought all was lost when the auction ended and I still hadn’t managed to uncover my password. That is, until Jason called me, told me he looked for his password in his gmail after hanging up with me on the off chance it would be there, found it, logged in, bid, and won. Yes folks, this was all in about a 45 second span.

So thanks to our (Jasmine and my) hero, here are some pics from Halloween with Jasmine, our little monkey!

Click here to see the video that grandma shot of us putting her into the costume.

Jasmine’s First Halloween

Pics from Halloween 2009.

Click here for the video of us putting Jasmine into the costume.

Click here for the full post.

Jasmine’s First Haircut

On Saturday (11/14/09) I finally broke down and allowed for Jasmine’s first haircut. I had been trying to hold off until her first birthday as a good luck thing, but if you watch the halloween video you can see she’s in desperate need.

Surprisingly, given her general curiosity, she sat relatively still and didn’t make the haircut lady’s life too difficult.

Music by Uncle Kracker, “Smile”

Happy Halloween!

Happy (very belated) Halloween! While we didn’t actually trick or treat with Jasmine, mostly because we felt ridiculous carrying our 9 month old door to door asking for candy we’d obviously consume, we did dress her up. The wonderful videography here is by my good ole mom

Music by Marson Ramos, “The Halloween Theme”

Random pics taken in July and August

Post on the details of the below events to follow:

Jasmine’s Food Adventures

If you follow our blog, you might have seen the video of Jasmine eating solids for the first time. Well this is the follow-up to that with Jasmine’s first ever feature “in the kitchen”.

We started Jasmine on solids when she turned 5 1/2 months. Her first teeth started coming in around that time and she started to look at us longingly while we ate dinner. We felt so bad for her just sitting there watching us eat that we had to let her in on the fun.

Touchy subject disclaimer: All families are different; this is just what Jason and I decided to do and it works for us. There are so many opinions out there that I actually suggest piecing them together and forming your own.

We decided early on that given our love of food and cooking, it would make the most sense for us to make all of Jasmine’s foods for her. Besides the fact that it’s super easy and convenient (more on this later), our main motivation for home-cooking her meals is so she won’t think that all food comes from a jar or a can. This is especially true since I don’t breastfeed and she is on formula. We’ve been lucky with the vegetable supply because it’s summer and there’s an abundance of fresh foods at the market for her to try. So far, I’ve made a good variety of foods with different flavors and there hasn’t been anything she’s disliked. Hopefully it will stay that way!

The food prep part is easy since most of her food stuff has to be steamed or roasted until very soft and then pureed. I will usually take an hour in the afternoon on Sunday to cook a batch of food and then portion it out to last until Thursday. Then on Thursday night, I’ll throw some extra vegetables of whatever I’m preparing for our dinner into a steam basket or into the oven to cook while we eat. I’ll then finish making her food after we eat and portion it out to last until the next batch of food on Sunday. This is what I portion and store her food in but now she’s eating much more than can fit in one of the containers. I will probably switch to something like this since the containers are larger and use the smaller containers for freezing her summer favorites to be used later on.

To date she’s eaten, in the following order:

Brown rice cereal – I toasted up raw brown rice in a pan and ground up the grains in a spice grinder to a powder. Then I whisked the powder with water (about 1:9 ratio) over a low flame until it looked like grits. It was still a bit thick for her first food so I mixed it with some formula to thin it out and to also make it a familiar taste for her.

Avocado - Avocados don’t need to be cooked since they are already a mushy food, so we just mashed this up with water/formula to make it like an avocado cream.

Barley cereal – Same methodology as the brown rice cereal.

Prunes - I steeped some dried prunes in hot water and then pureed it with some water to thin it out.

Jook (aka; congee, white rice cereal) – Jasmine had some stomach issues after all of the fiber we gave her – as you can probably deduce from the prunes we gave her – with the brown rice and barley, so we decided to give her plain congee that I made with some fresh chicken stock.

Zucchini - I steamed these and then pureed them.

String beans – I steamed these also and then pureed them with some zucchini to thin it out.

Sweet potato – As you can see from the list of foods before this, I was reluctant to give her anything sweet aside from the prunes, which were more out of necessity than anything else. I don’t want her to develop a sweet tooth for life so was planning on holding off on a lot of the orange vegetables. However, my grandmother (Jasmine’s great-grandmother) came and rescued Jasmine from green/white food purgatory and suggested that we mix sweet potato with congee to bland it down a bit. I immediately bought some sweet potatoes (to Jason’s delight) and roasted them in the oven. A quick mix with some congee at about a 1:2 (potato:rice) ratio and Jasmine was happy. Brilliant!

Peaches - I have been giving her fresh cut-up peaches while they’re available at the market through a baby safe feeder. She loves the peaches and has a great, albeit messy, time feeding herself.

Kohlrabi - This was steamed and pureed and also mixed with some congee. She absolutely loved this.

We’re feeding her carrots now and she’s absolutely loving those too

Here are some pictures of her food adventures. We’ve gotten much better about not getting food all over her face

And in non-food related news, she’s now sitting up on her own!

Being a Dad

I think one of the most common questions that I get is — not surprisingly — “What’s it like being a dad?” It’s tougher to explain the pros than the cons because it’s easier for people to relate to the tangible aspects like late nights, early mornings, and dirty diapers, all of which are the “work” part. It’s harder for me to explain that it’s all worth it just because she learns and laughs. The feeling of pride when she does something new, like simply rolling over or making a new sound, is a feeling that I think only parents can understand (I know that’s a cliché). All I can say is that it’s infinitely more rewarding to see your child accomplish something than to personally accomplish anything.

As for the laughing part, I hope the following video and pics put that in perspective. It’s the laughter in this video and the sheer elation in the photo that melt me. And always will melt me. This is what it’s like being a dad: nothing else matters when she laughs.

Jasmine’s First Meal

As you can expect from a set of food loving parents whose main concern on their wedding day was the quality of the fare, the event you’re about to witness was one of the most anticipated by us: the introduction of solid foods.

In this case, Jasmine was fed ground up toasted brown rice cooked with water and then mixed with some formula to provide an easy transition from a purely liquid diet. And it was fed to her in a manner that shows she is clearly our first child (i.e. we had no idea what we were doing). By the end of the meal the three of us were on the same page and worked pretty well as a gastro-team. Enjoy the footage; she’s now officially part of the “food at home” tag

Music by The Kinks, “Maximum Consumption”

Jasmine’s Entertainment…or Ours

I swear we bought both the door jumper and the Bumbo seat with Jasmine’s interests in mind. I can only imagine how boring it must be to be a baby — if not boring then frustrating — because everything Jasmine sees is new, but she’s hardly mobile and fairly uncoordinated so she can’t get to or play with the cool new stuff.

HOWEVER, it seems that as parents we enjoy watching her try to figure out the new things more than she actually is entertained by them, which is why I now question whether we’re buying stuff for her or subconciously buying accessories to keep ourselves entertained. You be the judge

**You don’t need sound but hearing her grunts and squeaks are half the fun**

« Previous Page — Next Page »