Happy Birthday

Happy 1st Birthday Baby H!

You are our light and our love, and we will never, ever, ever fly for 5 hours with you sitting our our laps again :) But we will greet you with hugs and kisses every morning, as long as you shall live under our roof. Even when you are a big, teenage boy and you are too cool for hugs and kisses. Just try to stop us. 

  

Standing outside Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop on the corner of Bourban Street in New Orleans!

This place proclaims itself to be the oldest bar in the country, originally owned by a pirate (Lafitte himself). In this photo you can see 2 very proud parents of a cozy one-year old. Who needs birthday cake when you can celebrate with a hurricane from Pat O'Brien's? :)   



"Nothing that you have not given away will ever truly be yours."-C.S. Lewis

What a remarkable gift, a toddler is. Baby H's first birthday was a flood of emotions and thanksgiving for the most perfect love I have ever known.



"Be the change that you want to see in the world."-Ghandi

I seem to have married the most perfect father for my son because we both believe that the ability to teach this to a child is something worth praying for and living for. And acting upon. We celebrate you every day, our son. Please don't throw your birthday beads in the toilet...  

Real Thanksgiving

I have always been fascinated by the bible story of Jonah. It seems like this is mainly a story that gets way watered down and told to young kids in church, but the truth is, it is a very remarkable and powerful account of hitting bottom and of salvation. I love the way this prayer is written just as much as the prayer itself. Whether it was meant as a metaphor or really happened matters not to me because the prayer is real. The thanksgiving is real.

Like a true nerd, I have highlighted my favorite lines :) Happy Thanksgiving.

Jonah's Prayer of Thanksgiving for Deliverance

Source: Jonah 2 (NKJV)

Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from the fish's belly

And he said:

I cried out to the Lord because of my affliction,

And He answered me.

out of the belly of Sheol I cried,

And you heard my voice.

For You cast me into the deep,

Into the heart of the seas,

And the floods surrounded me;

All Your billows and Your waves passed over me.

Then I said, I have been cast out of Your sight;

Yet I will look again toward Your holy temple.
The waters encompassed me, even to my soul;

The deep closed around me;

Weeds were wrapped around my head.

I went down to the moorings of the mountains;

The earth with its bars closed behind me forever;

Yet You brought up my life from the pit,

O LORD, my God.

When my soul fainted within me,

I remembered the Lord;

And my prayer went up to You,

Into Your holy temple.

Those who regard worthless idols

Forsake their own Mercy.

But I will sacrifice to You

With the voice of thanksgiving;

I will pay what I have vowed.

Salvation is of the Lord.

So the Lord spoke to the fish,

and it vomited out Jonah onto dry land.

Giveaway #1: Top 100 Baby Purees

This post is actually a giveaway for a WONDERFUL book by Annabel Karmel called Top 100 Baby Purees. Ms. Karmel is a children's nutrition expert from the UK, and I have used, loved, and memorized this book since Baby H was 5 months old. It is not just a compilation of recipes for making your own baby purees. She gives very helpful hints and important facts throughout the book much in the same way the "x for Dummies" books do. They seem to pop out at you at the perfect times for the age of your baby. One of the first interesting facts I learned was that in order to properly absorb certain nutrients such as beta-carotene, you also need to provide baby with a fat source. I mashed a lot of yam with breast milk at first, then moved on to unsalted butter and now organic, whole milk and/or walnuts or fish. 

She's obviously into food and likes cooking, so the entire thing is written from the perspective that you are going to enjoy preparing nutritious meals for your children and have fun with it. It is my belief after having done this as well as purchased store-bought baby food, that not only is it so much cheaper to prep your own baby food, but I can't even begin to put into words how the nutrition rates. BAH and I noticed that in a lot of the meat baby food (and this was the Earth's Best brand) the meat would be the third ingredient after water and usually apples...which are mostly water. 

Make of this what you will, but I stand by my opinion that if you are making food for yourself, regardless of if you work outside of or in the home, or you sit around on your ass all day eating bonbons, there is no reason why your kid can't at least get one homemade meal a day. It certainly helps if you enjoy doing it! 

This is the easiest, breeziest giveaway you will ever come across, short of someone literally just handing you the thing. I am not going to make you "like" anything or repost anything. Seriously? Just send me a good, old-fashioned email at beccaswilderness(at)gmail(dot)com or leave a comment on this post. I'll throw your name into a hat and contact you if you are drawn. The condition of the book is near perfect. I got what I needed from it and would love to pass it on to someone else. Best of luck. This giveaway will end December 1.     

A Wild Ride



This is so much better than Gymboree, and by the looks of things, I don't think I am the only one who feels that way :)



Dudes...We've been enjoying the cooler temps and getting solid sleep (thank you, 11-month old Baby H). The result? I can remember things again. Thankfully, I have realized that my brain didn't delete everything, it just stored it away for a while. All of the Latin names of plants and insects are starting to come back to me. The crazy-insano sense of smell, that's also come back (thank you, husband, for the new HEPA filter on the vacuum). I remember where I put things. My sense of time has (sort of) returned. Amazing.

The first year of motherhood...what a wild ride :) I have to say, this stage, whatever it is, totally rocks.

I am getting the sense that we are moving on to toddler-hood. Baby H wants to be independent and do things himself, but at the end of the day, he wants our attention most of all. After all, it was he who invented the Sandwich Hug (BAH+Baby H+Momma).

Hang in there, new parents. Your brain will return, or so it seems :)