Patrick the Always Hungry Baby and Upcoming Thanksgiving Recipes

Well... this was kind of like "trying..."

One of these days Patrick is going to realize that he can feed himself.  I had hope for a moment yesterday when he picked up a piece of egg and brought it to his mouth.  Then he paused, smiled and held his hand out to offer it to Paul.  When Paul shook his head and said "no thanks buddy, you can have it" Patrick promptly threw it on the ground.  But I guess that's closer to eating something from his own little hands than immediately throwing every little piece of food that touches his tray onto the ground so... baby steps.

On the other hand I'm fairly convinced that he must be going through a growth spirt and is making up for living on milk up until this point by wanting to eat everything he can see.  He even "found" a banana that had belonged to one of his sisters (who knows if it was stolen or abandoned, as I found out today at lunch that everything on Mae's plate looks better than anything else on the table to him) and brought it over for Paul to feed to him.  Pumpkin pie beat out avocado as his clear favorite for the day (so far).

I'm still kind of amazed that he weighed 22 lbs and got all his calories from nursing and was perfectly happy that way.  But I'm also glad that he's at least accepting food now so that I don't have to worry quite so much about being his only source of food.

In totally unrelated Patrick news (which I shared on the blog facebook page yesterday, but just have to share again here because the cuteness was just too much) Mae was having a rough time yesterday afternoon and was crying inconsolably in the middle of the dining room.  Patrick came charging over with a wipe in his hand and climbed up onto her lap.  Then he turned towards her and started to dab at her eyes with the wipe.

It was possibly one of the cutest moments I've ever witnessed in my entire life.

He was also walking around the house this morning carrying a yellow bouncy ball.  He would take two or three steps and then set the ball down (it's huge) to steady himself and then he'd take another two or three steps while looking around proudly.

And because this post is already random stream of consciousness I'll let everyone in on the kind-of-forming plan I've been mulling over as I've been hard at work in the kitchen.  I've been experimenting for about a month now, attempting to come up with new versions of our favorite Thanksgiving recipes that are okay for Mae.

Last Year's Thanksgiving (minus the Turkey)
Every single one of the dishes shown would
have something in it Mae can't have...

So far I've got the recipes for the Turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce (I love making cranberry sauce) and pumpkin pie down (the kids were pretty thrilled when I announced that they could have pumpkin pie for lunch... but this pumpkin pie is so incredibly healthy I thought, why not?).

I made key lime pie today too, and decided it will actually be on the table Thanksgiving day alongside the pumpkin (since it lives in the freezer anyways).  And I'm experimenting with different types of homemade cream soda (today I made cranberry and I'm hoping it's a hit).  I'm still working on a few more dishes, but I am planning on posting the recipes I've come up with this next week (am I that organized?  I hope I'm that organized!).

That's the latest here.  From what I can gather from Weather.com the storm is supposed to hit in about an hour... right before we leave for our attempt at Mass with the entire family.  I let the talk of "severe" weather scare me out of walking this morning (I did see the top of our compost thing-y get ripped of this afternoon, so it is mighty windy out there).  I'm hoping they surprise me by falling asleep on the way there... and staying asleep through Mass.  What do you think the chances of that are?  1 in 1000?

Here's hoping for an utterly uneventful outing!