Five Books to Read to a Strong Girl

A little back story. For the majority of my pregnancy, I believe that I was having a girl. I was so sure of this that when the blood test that I had done, which was in the magnitude of 99.2% accurate, indicated that I was having a boy, I just assumed that I was part of the 0.8% where it was inaccurate. I was not even 100% convinced when the high definition ultrasound confirmed the test result.

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Top 5 Books to Read to My Two Year Old

I am a lucky mother for many reasons, but one of them is that my son LOVES to read. As a one year old, he would sit happily paging through The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Of course, he is obviously not at the age when he can read to himself, so he picks up his book and goes “read it, mama.” In his room, some of the books are out of his reach, so he leads me over by my hand, and goes “pick”, his signal for me to lift him up so that he can pick a new book. I am trying to encourage this as much as I can because I really do want him to get an appreciation for books.

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What I Did for Homemade Baby Food

While I was pregnant, my mother asked me what I planned to make my son for his first solid foods. I looked at her as though she had multiple heads, and said “I plan to buy jarred food.” This seemed totally reasonable to me. But as Lucas started to get closer to 6 months, I began to reconsider. To be clear, I have zero judgment for parents that do not do this. But, I had a generous maternity leave policy, a very supportive husband who helped, and, truthfully, boiling some veggies takes approximately 15 minutes total. While I was cooking my own food, it was easy to boil something for Lucas.

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My Experience with Gestational Diabetes

When I was about 24 months pregnant with Lucas, I took, like most women, a test for gestational diabetes. And I failed it. I had to come back for a second three-hour long test. The nurse taking my blood took a look at me, and said, “there is no way you have gestational diabetes.” But she was wrong, I did. She took my blood over the course of 3 hours, to the point where my body refused to give her blood during the third test. But no matter, I had failed so spectacularly that they didn’t need that third data point. I learned later that half of the women who have gestational diabetes don’t have any risk factors.

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Welcome, to Ketchup with Lucas!

Hi all,

And welcome to my new site, Ketchup with Lucas! I started a YouTube channel featuring my son a few weeks ago, and this seems like a natural extension of that.

 

When I was first starting to cook for a toddler, I was so clueless. I would look up recipes on Pinterest, other blogs, cookbooks. I wouldn’t say I’m a bad cook – I can generally make whatever you ask of me, but without any crazy sauces. But cooking for Lucas is different. He is starting to develop his toddler tastebuds, and it’s not always clear what will work. Tonight he demanded to eat one of my husband’s mussels. Earlier this morning he refused to even try the broccoli. Why did a weird bug-like food look more appetizing than a food that looks similar to things he is fond of? Unclear.

Lucas likes a lot of what I cook, but there’s always something that I expect will be a huge hit, and then it flops hopelessly.

On his YouTube channel, I post videos of the recipes that I try, and his reaction. Hopefully he will end up liking more than he spits out. I’d love for you to subscribe, using the link above.

I’d also love to get all of your thoughts, and suggestions for what you’d like to see more of. I’m making this up as I go along, and any opinions would be very greatly appreciated.