Jungle Family + Avocado "Cheesecakes"

Sunday

Arthur woke up around 7, grumbled a bit and went back to sleep, then woke again at 7:30. During his morning bath, Arthur made two exciting discoveries: he could splash with his feet (therefore giving his parents a bath as well) and he had a wiener he could grab! He was pretty thrilled about these both.

In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the bear better sleep tonight...

We did try to measure and weigh him, and while our results are probably far from accurate, they are encouraging: 70.5cm and 7.3kg. Both mean he's jumped up several percentiles in height and weight, so I don't want to put too much stock in them before our next Consultatie Bureau appointment, but, like I said, encouraging.

After the bath, Arthur got to wear his jungle jumpsuit that matched his mom's. We also found the the Hawaiian shirt we had got him for Guam, while still quite big on him, can work over other clothes, so we stuck it over his jumpsuit and he was able to match with both parents at the same time! I'd say it was a hit, and nice to have a little matching jungle family.

Arthur got a nap in at 10:00, but he didn't get his usual midday nap in; he wasn't tired during his walk with Papa, and since G-Dawg called during his 1:00 nursing session, he didn't get any sleep in then either. So he was pretty darn exhausted by the time afternoon snack time rolled around, fussing and constantly rubbing his eyes. He seemed to like the homemade soy yogurt/peanut butter combination I gave him, but did rub it in his eyes quite a bit, and fussed a lot more than usual when the spoon wasn't in his mouth. He did finish the whole serving, though, so I followed it up with another ready-made baby food purée comprised of spinach, parsnip, and chicken. This was a hit, but Arthur was also fading fast, so we ended snack time early so he could nap trap his mama and get some much-needed sleep in.

At dinner, I decided to feed him the rest of the chia-soymilk-oatmeal. I melted some ghee into it, but ended up putting in a bit too much so that it was really greasy. So then I added some rice porridge powder to soak up some of the ghee. He liked it quite a bit, although he was going full-on witching hour at that point. When he finished the oatmeal, I gave him some more of the ready-made purée from earlier that day, but he was quickly devolving into a mess. So he only ate a few bites before I gave up, and started nursing him, upon which he promptly fell asleep - shocker, I know.

Arthur's Sunday solid menu thus contained:

• soy yogurt

• peanut butter

• parsnip

• spinach

• chicken

• chia seeds

• soy milk

• oatmeal

• rice porridge

• milk powder

• ghee

Monday

Glory of all glories - Arthur (after a brief 6:00 fussing and falling back asleep) slept in until 8:00!!! His wakeup times seem to be moving in a direction I very much approve of. We had a nice morning doing laundry, reading, tummy timing, napping, and grocery shopping. His biggest fan at Lidl once again made a beeline towards him, grabbing his stroller and showing him off to all of her coworkers, who also cooed over him. Miklós met her the other day when he took Arthur to Lidl, and she asked where his mama was. It's fun to be regulars at a place where Arthur is such a celebrity.

Morning story-time

He was in a pretty goofy mood for the most of the afternoon, despite (or perhaps because of) not sleeping during his usual 12:00 or 1:00 nap-time. For his afternoon snack, we tried a new food and a new way of eating! I wanted to try giving him something other than mash/purées, so I sliced up half a banana into strips and gave him one. He was really unsure about it, and struggled to feed himself the banana strips, but eventually took to them a bit better when they were mashed on a spoon. I'm going to try experimenting with it again; I would like to try to move a bit towards the baby-led weaning strategy, and I think sliced banana is a good start!

For dinner, however, I wanted to keep things simple, because Arthur eats at the same time his parents do, and it's easier to multitask with a food he already knows and likes. So I gave him more of the spinach-chicken-parsnip purée, thickened up with a bit of rice porridge to make it less liquidy (and maybe less messy?) He was very very hungry and ate quite a lot of the concoction.

So, on Monday, Arthur ate:

• banana (new food!)

• spinach

• chicken

• parsnip

• rice porridge

• milk powder

Sunday dinner was Miklós's domain, and Monday we had leftover takeout. But I did make a snack that turned out super delicious, and I want to post the recipe. I had saved this recipe a while back as being something that looked good, and when I had a ripe avocado over the weekend, I decided to give the recipe a go! I changed the crust quite a bit, and the filling a little, but damn, they turned out awesome. I am definitely going to make more the next time I have a ripe avocado! Here's how I made them:

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Vegan No-Bake Avocado "Cheesecakes" (makes 4 mini cheesecakes)

Ingredients

• Crust:

  • 3 tbsp honey/syrup of choice

  • 2 tbsp flax seeds (mine were crushed)

  • 2 tbsp unflavored rice protein (you could probably sub any protein or more flax seeds here)

  • 3 tbsp unsweetened desiccated coconut, toasted

  • ¼ tsp salt

    
    

• Filling:

  • 125 g ripe avocado flesh (~one large avocado - if it’s too small like mine was, you can add a bit of yogurt to make up the extra weight)

  • 2 tbsp syrup/6 squirts sucralose

  • 2 tbsp lemon juice

  • 2 tsp extra virgin coconut oil, in its liquid form (if yours is solid, gently warm it)

  • 1 tsp grated ginger (optional - this was really good but I might try experimenting with other flavors next time, like vanilla extract)

  • sprinkle of salt

Instructions

1. Mix all of the crust ingredients except for the honey/syrup in a bowl (I used a cereal bowl).

2. Add the syrup, and continue mixing until the dough is sticky. If it's too dry, add in a sprinkle or two of water.

3. Divide the crust dough into four silicon muffin trays, and place in the freezer.

4. Add all of the filling ingredients to a blender or to the same bowl if you'd rather use a stick blender.

5. Use your blender of choice to blend the filling ingredients until smooth.

6. Take the crusts out of the freezer and top each with ¼ of the filling. They will be pretty full!

7. Place the cheesecakes back in the freezer for at least two hours.

8. The original recipe recommends letting a cheesecake thaw at room temperature for 10 minutes before eating, but I actually really like them straight out of the freezer!