Going skim… and a lot of other things

For two weeks starting yesterday, my diet is going to be devoid of as much dairy fat as possible.  That means skim milk, nonfat yogurt, no butter, and no ice cream! I am participating in a study over at the University of Idaho where they are looking at the effect of dietary milk fat on breastmilk.  Interesting, huh?  (at least to me it is). On the upside of it, it means free dairy products and a little extra cash.  I tried to switch to skim milk once a long time ago and didn’t make it very far, so here I am now drinking 16oz a day in addition to a serving each of nonfat yogurt and cheddar cheese.  I didn’t even know that nonfat cheese existed but yes, it does and happens to be rather… unsatisfying.  I got to dinnertime without having eaten it yet yesterday and so put it on my brown rice.  Don’t know if I will try that one again.  This morning I tried to get it over with as soon as possible so I had it on some eggs. A day and a half down, twelve and a half left to go.  Then I have two weeks of my normal diet followed by two weeks of full fat milk, cheese, and yogurt (still no butter or ice cream, but that’s probably a good thing!) The gal who is doing the study is really sweet and it turns out we know some of the same people… go figure.  She said we could even find out our results, which I’m excited for  (yes, I know, I’m a stay at home mom nerd).

Speaking of fat, we had Ransom’s six month checkup on Wednesday and found out that he’s a big kid!  The babe weighs 19.5 lbs (78th percentile) and is 27.75 in long (85h percentile).  I don’t quite understand it but somehow the doctor said that this means he’s heftier than 70% of other kids his age.  If their height percentile is bigger than their weight percentile, wouldn’t that mean that he is relatively skinny?  That said, he just looks like a little chunk, and he’s a happy bubbly baby to boot so whatever it is, we’re pleased 🙂  The little man is becoming more and more confident in his army crawl capabilities and has taken a new interest in standing up (it very much faded over the last month or so but is now back in full force).  For some reason he has an amazing drive to stand up in his bath tub and managed to pull himself up all by himself the other day! Probably the buoyancy from the water helped.

As a slight (and really, I do mean slight) downside, the little guy has trouble turning off his brain in the middle of the day and as a result his naptime has shortened drastically.  If I’m *lucky* he will sleep 1.5 hours during the day split into two naps by himself, and if I stay with him, I can probably extend the afternoon nap out a bit, which often gives me a nap as well, but doesn’t help me get much done.    The result is a dramatic loss of free time.  That said, he’s pretty much a happy kid when he’s awake, and I don’t mind spending the extra time with him if it’s full of big smiles, cute little words, and lots of wiggling around.  One thing we ARE currently having difficulty with is figuring out how to put him down.  Currently we are still swaddling him because otherwise he flips over and scoots himself around until he gets stuck in a corner or somewhere else and gets really confused and upset.  However he can still turn over and use his legs when he’s swaddled, so he just turns into a little grub instead of a little bug and gets stuck only slightly less quickly.  Thus far, I don’t think he has learned how to fall asleep on his tummy, namely because we spent the first four months of his life deathly afraid of that sleeping position.  If anyone has suggestions, I’m all ears 🙂  Feel free to send me a personal email if you’d rather not comment on the blog page.

On a sad note, the tea challenge has met its demise not quite half way through.  Husband agreed with me yesterday that we weren’t going to keep it up.  I sortof had a premonition when I found myself for several evenings having missed a morning cup and thus trying to consume two.  Also, the weather has taken a turn for the better and it is starting for the first time in WEEKS to get warm, and who wants to drink a hot cup of tea on an already warm day?  After the twenty-five or so varieties that I did manage to drink, I must say that my tea tastes have considerably broadened.  Part of the difficulty in continuing the experiment was that I found myself yearning for a cup of whatever it was that I had had a couple days ago, but no, I had to go pick a new one out of duty.  Also, when you are exhausted at the end of the day, the last thing you want to do is make a decision about an unknown flavor of tea that you want to drink.  Thus, goodbye little tea experiment, you were fun while you lasted, but are now no more.  I will take a moment to mention however, that probably the most unique tea of the 25 was cheonji dew tea, which tastes oddly sweet and sour.  I did a google search on it and found that some else had blogged about it here. The cannister they show is even the same!  Feel free to have a cup if you stop by our house, otherwise you can pick some up in Korea 🙂

Finally, our internet is having issues, so pictures will be difficult to post until that gets resolved.  Bear with me please.

Ok, I need to go check on a baby.  Take care!