December 19, 2007

Guest Baby Tip: Keeping a Baby Food Journal

I babble about business, babies, and parenthood on this blog, so those of you who come here to read my posts on entrepreneurship but do not have babies, please forward this post to your friends and family who do have babies. For those who have babies and dabble in business, these tips might be right up your alley.  If you have babies and have no interest in business, then send it on to the folks you know who are knee-deep in business and encourage them to have a baby!

The last baby tip was by Carole Hayes on wonderful, well-researched ways to increase milk supply and now we bring you…

Keeping a Baby Food Journal
by Neena of A Mom’s Life at NeenMachine.com

I am honored that Aruni has asked me to do a guest post here on entrepreMusings.  As a “seasoned” mother of four the Baby Tips category is right up my alley and a hard one to pare down (I have accumulated a lot of advice over the years - 11 to be exact!).  In later years, when our other children were ready to start solid foods, we were much better prepared. By being slow and meticulous we were finally able to have fun with the introduction of solid foods.The key to our success is what we called a Baby Food Journal. 

When our babies were around six months of age, and we made the decision to start the solid food phase, the journaling would begin.

Everyday, I would record the time of feeding, the amount, and the babies reaction to the taste (this one was for fun).

After the feeding, I would make notes of any unusual observations and the time they occurred. These would include skin rashes, health issues, upset stomach, gassiness, or general fussiness. 

The next day the process would be repeated. If the food seemed to agree with the baby then it was time to increase the amount and again record my observations. If I saw an unusual reaction a call the pediatrician would be in order. And if I was unsure whether the reaction was indeed caused by the food, something like fussiness for example, then I would feed the baby a small quantity of the same food and watch for a repeat reaction.

Only introducing one new food per week in the first few months of starting solids was my rule. If things were going well I would reduce the time between new foods to three or four days.

Keeping a Baby Food Journal took a lot of stress and uncertainty out of the feeding process. And it was good documentation to give the pediatrician if things weren’t going well.

*photos used in this post by belgianchocolate and joeltelling, respectively

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Check out Neena’s blog.  She has a lot of great things to share…with 4 kids she knows more than most of us about raising kids!  Since her kids are older she never had the opportunity to use Babble Soft applications and she told me that when she was writing this guest tip, it crossed her mind that Baby Insights might help people keep track of solid feeding.  We will be adding that feature in the future but  interestingly our families often use the Medicine Dose pages to keep track of baby’s and/or mom’s food intake to discern patterns in baby’s reaction to foods or breast milk.  Go figure.  Our families are so awesome and so creative!

Note to new readers: these tips are based on our experiences, as well as those of our friends and readers. Please always consult with your doctor before implementing any tip that might impact the health of your baby. If you have a tip you’d like to submit please send an email to blogger at babblesoft dot com for possible inclusion.  Please check the ‘baby tips’ category to make sure your tip (in some form or fashion) hasn’t already been posted. If it has been, feel free to comment on that post and support the tip. We also welcome respectful challenges to the tips because as is noted in our inaugural baby tip ‘everything is relative!’ We will, of course, give anyone who submits a tip we publish credit and a link back to their site!

September 5, 2007

FYI: What’s Cooking!

Readers and friends email me about things they are up to or in to and I thought it would nice to share some of their stories.   Michelle Stern, Owner of What’s Cooking Weekly found out about our blog from a post on Mommy Track’d a while back.  She sent me information on her site and what she has been up to.  I just had to say ‘Wow!’ 

Now, I’m a person who likes to avoid the kitchen if at all possible.  I can cook and I can cook fairly well, but it is not a passion of mine.  My passions are making my kids laugh, blogging, and building businesses.  I also have to psyche myself up to go to the grocery store.  Plus after having kids, it’s much harder to cook without one of them hanging on me or needing me to get something for them. 

So after years of getting frozen prepared meals from a nearby HEB grocery store, eating out, picking up, and/or having too much spaghetti, we found a college girl who comes 2 to 3 evenings per week and helps with cooking, shopping, and cleaning the kitchen.  She is a wonderful cook…you can tell she really enjoys it, and I often wish we could afford to have her around every day!  She even lets the kids help her and doesn’t lose her cool like I do.  Maybe she can get some ideas from What’s Cooking Weekly for our family.

For those who like to cook (or don’t like to cook) and need some fast, easy meal ideas, please check out her site.  It is extremely well done and based on our email exchanges, I have been very impressed with Michelle.

About What’s Cooking Weekly
Don’t know what’s for dinner tonight?  No time to plan meals, let alone scrawl out a thorough grocery lists? Give What’s Cooking Weekly a try.  It will save your time and your sanity by providing you with healthy menus and grocery lists for 5 seasonal meals every week.  It even gives you a list of jobs your kids can do to help you prepare each recipe! Subscribe to What’s Cooking Weekly or use our free Sample Menu!  Also check out Recommended Cooking Tools for Families.