A Common Disaster

I'm on my own with Kaitlyn for a bit and it's the first time I've had her all alone in our condo since she became mobile. This morning I learned just how un-baby-proof our house is when there's not an extra set of eyes watching her.

In the time it took me to make a latte and pour a bowl of cereal Kaitlyn managed to splash in the cat water fountain and make a huge puddle, get her wet hands far too close to an unprotected outlet, chew on the open end of a plugged-in phone charger, stuff two unknown objects from the floor into her mouth, pull down my pyjama pants, pull out a few yards of toilet paper and pull two workbooks off the coffee table. Luckily, I found the cat vomit on the carpet before she did. What a first morning!

So here's what I learned about how to make mornings work better when I'm doing it solo:

1. Get up before the baby. This is the only hope I have of washing my face (maybe even getting a shower!) or getting a coffee made in peace. Hopefully me being up doesn't also encourage her to wake up early.

2. Sweep every night before bed.

3. Get more plug covers, I'll need them at the new house anyways. Already done.

4. Move the cat water fountain. Already done.

5. Do as much meal planning and preparation as possible the night before.

So tonight I'll be setting an alarm for the first time in over a year and the house will be spotless (haha) before I go to bed. That's okay, we need to start getting ready for a back-to-work schedule anyways. Any other advice to make solo parenting easier?

The little trouble maker during our summer family photos.

Update: My first day planning to get up before Kaitlyn was an utter disaster. She fought sleep until 10 pm, then I couldn't get to sleep until 1 am. She woke up at 5:30 am. I nursed her praying that she would go back to sleep. She did and I returned to bed and shut off my alarm clock thinking "Hey, it's Sunday. So we'll both have a little sleep-in." She got up at 6:30 am, the time my alarm had been set for. On the bright side, my extra baby-proofing meant that I got my coffee and her cereal made without incident. 

Apple Pickin' Fun!

We've just returned from a visit with my parents, who live just outside of the Okanagan or, as I call it, the Land O' Plenty. In their back yard are two apple trees, a sour cherry tree, a peach tree, a pear tree and a decorative cherry tree. While we were there, apples were falling off the branches at a rate of about one per minute, which made me more than a little anxious because Kaitlyn spent most of her time playing in the shade of the apple trees. More than once an apple narrowly missed her as she swung under the branches! On the bright side, she got a lot of practice sinking her two little teeth into a number of Kaitlyn-sized apples!

Finally, my dad and I made an attempt to avert disaster by picking the apples that looked best and biggest. We ended up with two huge barrels and it didn't even look like we had made a dent! So what to do with all those apples? Make applesauce for the baby of course! We peeled and sliced 15 pounds of apples, boiled them up with a little lemon and cinnamon (no sugar for this little one!) and fed the whole mess through a food processor.

Fifteen pounds of apples ready to go!

Boiling up the apples with the canning tub standing ready.

The finished product, my first batch of applesauce!

We ended up with 16 small and 3 large jars of applesauce. I'm still amazed that my parents simply know how to do all of this canning. What would have been a weekend job for me was just a few hours at their house. And more than that, they are always sharing their home-canned goods with us. No visit ends without a suitcase overloaded with applesauce, pesto, peaches, green beans, beets and moose meat. It doesn't get much better than that!

Now Kaitlyn has homemade applesauce from apples picked by her mom and grandpa and I learned a little bit more about canning, although I don't think I'll be trying it at home any time soon. I'll also be using the applesauce in this recipe for her birthday cake. It's simple, tasty and has no refined sugar, my kind of baby-friendly recipe!

Now that we're home we are getting ready to move into our house, throw a birthday party, bring in our own garden and finally, start work again. Updates to follow.