A Solid Approach to Solids?

On the cusp of celebrating six months with Baby D, I am increasingly asked the million-dollar question:

"Has he started solids yet?"

Short answer: No.

Long answer: I am a very lazy mother. I'm really digging this period of perpetually carrying around Baby MRE's.

Perhaps Le Petit Monsieur would like to try the Milk this evening?
Prepared fresh from the finest ingredients, and served by the chef herself! Ooh la la!

Meal planning is not my strong suit, and I'm not looking forward to actually coming up with nutritious dishes for the little guy! Also, I have better things to do than sit there and shove stuff in his mouth. I saw enough of my baby being force-fed at the NICU, thankyouverymuch.

So ideally, I don't want to start him on solids until he's ready to feed himself.

This will require

-Sitting up independently 

-Having some teeth already!!!

-Using the finger-thumb pincer grasp

 There are few other factors to the delay, as well. The diaper sprayer fell apart last week, so I'm not adequately prepared to deal with the solid poop. (The great thing about breast-fed poop [not that there's ever anything great about poop, lol]  is that it's water-soluble, so you can just throw those cloth diapers straight into the washing machine-- talk about easy! Once you start solids, however, you have to use flushable liners or spray the diapers down before washing. Sad face!) We're also moving across the country sometime next month, so the less complicated feeding Baby D is, the better! He is still growing at a ridiculous rate on milk alone, so I'm not worried about nutrition. I will not buy commercial baby food, and I hate cleaning blenders, so Baby D will need a set of chompers to puree his own food!

But when I DO start feeding him solids, I don't want to wean him completely yet. The goal is to breastfeed Baby D until at least his first birthday. However much further beyond one year is something we'll play by ear! I used to be that person that was so grossed out by the idea of toddler breastfeeding, but the more I find out about the wonderful properties of breastmilk, the more I'm in favor of keeping it in his diet as long as possible.

So that is [hopefully] my plan. I'm curious to hear other experiences or plans on introducing solids! When did/do you plan to start? It is easier with teeth? For you CDing moms: did it instantly get harder to wash those diapers?

Silly Monkey!

Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote a blog post about my very first purchase for Baby D:

At the time, I didn't know what the intended wearer would look like, or what kind of personality this baby would have. Heck, I didn't even know what Baby D's gender was!


It is SO.COOL. to see a million possibilities turn into one reality.

I am so blessed. :-)

A Funny Flashback

I was fifteen, thousands of miles from home, and dealing with the oppressive Southern July heat. I was in Florida at a three-week summer music camp, and enjoying every minute of it, despite being at a super-strict Christian college! (I liked to call it Pensacola Concentration Camp)

Almost every evening in the cafeteria, I was in the habit of selecting a random table full of campers I hadn't met yet and dining with them, so that I'd keep on meeting new people. One night, as I left the food line and surveyed the available tables, I caught sight of one table with a girl, a short guy, a tall guy, and one empty seat. Perfect.


So I sat down, and the introductions began! "I'm Stephani," said the girl. The short guy chimed in: "My name's Keith, and this guy is Brenden." He pointed to the tall guy.

Now, I'm usually really bad at remembering names, and since camp was already almost halfway over, I was getting really tired of being forgetful. I was determined to remember THESE names, at least! So I mentally repeated to myself over and over, "Stephani. Keith. Brenden. Keith. Brenden. Stephani." The rest of the dinner was lighthearted and fun, and I made sure to use their names a lot. "So, what instrument do you play, BRENDEN?" "Where are you from, KEITH?"

And believe it or not, I had their names memorized by the end of dinnertime! I was so PROUD of myself! So for the next ten days of camp or so, I relished every opportunity to use this knowledge. Since I seemed to run into Brenden the most, he got to hear his name called a lot.

"How's it going, Brenden?" "Nice to see you again, Brenden!" From across the campus: "HI, BRENDEN!!!!"

So it was utterly crushing when he pulled me aside a couple days before the end of camp, and said, "Um, Keith calls me Brenden because he thinks I look like Brenden Frasier, the movie star. My name is actually Adam."


And that, folks, is how I met my husband.


I think his name is Adam. I'll never be quite sure.


Have a Happy Valentine's Day tomorrow! Whether you have a sweetie or not, be sure to enjoy lots of chocolate! :-)

I actually still keep in touch with Stephani, whose real name is still Stephani. Thank God. Be sure to check out her blog!

25 Things You Probably Didn't Want to Know about Me

First off, let me say that my readers are awesome! You have helped jump-start my brain for new blog post ideas. Thank you, thank you. So here are 25 things about me, as requested.



1. I am totally fine with drinking unpasteurized milk and eating eggs fresh from the chicken coop, but I will not get within ten feet of that scary Amish Friendship Bread stuff. At least with the eggs and milk, you know exactly where it came from!

2. I don't share this little tidbit very often, but I was homeschooled all twelve years. Oh, I'm plenty proud of my education, but you'd be surprised at the prejudices people have against homeschoolers.

3. I have read The Bronze Bow every year since middle school. I don't even know why, because it's not my favorite book; it's just something I do. :-P

4. I own a coffee pot, a french press, and an espresso machine. You might say I like coffee! But I still limit myself to one cup a day.

5. My guilty pleasure: watching anime. But it has to be GOOD anime-- so I don't watch much. :-P

6. Foods you will never see cooked or consumed on this blog: mushrooms and green peppers. EW.

7. I liked Adam for an entire year secretly until he came around and realized what an awesome catch I was. ;-)

8. In high school, I went vegetarian for one month, and that was the best I've ever felt in my life!

9. When Pavarotti came to town on his final concert tour, I got to play violin in his orchestra! That was the coolest thing ever!

If you squint reeeeeeally hard... I'm still not in the picture. :-(

10. I am first-born through and through. Responsible, high-achiever, people-pleaser, can take charge if I really have to. Since my mom is also a first-born, that makes Baby D at least a third-generation firstborn. :-P

11. I am embarrassingly good at Mario Kart.

12. I was HUGELY inspired by St. Francis of Assisi as a teen. Even now, I love finding info about him.

13. I am a Francophile. I've been studying French since age 14, and I am chomping at the bit to go to France!

14. I am most seriously grieved by what happened to Littlest Pet Shop and Polly Pocket toys. Remember when those things actually looked like animals and actually fit in your pocket? Sigh.

These look like animals.

These look like aliens.

15. Most people start using mama cloth pads after cloth diapering their babies. For me, it was just the opposite! I started using cloth pads in college, and the difference in comfort was so phenomenal, I knew I couldn't put my future babies in plastic, either. :-P

16. Don't laugh, but I have always wanted to learn how to belly dance. Stop laughing!

17. I was briefly a church organist. I don't know how to play the organ.

18. I have also been Superintendent of Canned Foods at the county fair, but I don't know how to can. It is amazing the things you can do, even if you're a complete ignoramus!

19. I have no desire to quilt. Okay, maybe the crafter in me has a teensy weensy desire, but I just don't have the patience to cut a piece of fabric into zillions of tiny shapes,  just so I can sew it all back together again. I really admire beautiful quiltwork, but I just don't think that's an activity I would enjoy!

I have to admit, though, this is pretty darn cool.

20. The first thing I ever cooked was a fried egg, when I was eight years old. My dad must have gotten sick of making PB&J for me, because he called me into the kitchen and gave me a cooking lesson!

21. I never had a cavity in my life until I went to college and started drinking juice on a regular basis. That stuff is not that great for you!

22. I had a very real fear of Borgs (from Star Trek) all the way into college. I just knew there was one in a dark corner, waiting to assimilate me!

23. Despite being quite tall (5'9" on a good day), I am TERRIBLE at basketball.

24. I hate hate HATE promise rings. Invented by greedy jewelers who just couldn't squeeze enough money out of the engaged and married folk, these rings make an underwhelming statement of love: "I promise to promise to get married!" Seriously, if you're going to wear a ring on that finger, just commit already!

Look at me! I love to create really awkward situations when you ask if I'm engaged!

25.  It took me an entire day to come up with all these things. Gee, I need to learn how to skydive or something.

Time to ask YOU a question!

Okay, it's time to break out of this blogging malaise and bring you something besides bread posts. The problem is that nothing's been happening here since that snow storm last week. The roads are pretty horrible because Oklahoma doesn't know how to handle that white stuff falling from the sky, so I've been snowbound, and things have been booooooooring around here.

This is a Google Image result for "malaise".
At Downright Domesticity, the buck stops here!

So let me ask you: what would you like to read a post about? Any burning questions you have about what goes on at the Downright Domicile?


Now, sitting here thinking of what crazy things some of you might ask has given me a few ideas for what to post next. Hooray! But I still aim to please, so please feel free to put in your request!

Knead It Monday: Oatmeal Bread

You probably think by now that I sit around and brainstorm ways to totally mess up my breadbaking experiences. It may make good blogging material, but I am honestly just a girl who wants to make a decent loaf of bread but sincerely does that many dumb things in the kitchen. That being said, I had another weird bread adventure.

This week's loaf is also from the Reader's Digest Homemade book. I had such great success with the homemade pretzels, that surely their bread would be good, too!... Right? Right?

I baked this on the eve of that bad snowstorm that swept the Midwest. The recipe said that it was for one loaf of bread, but since I wanted two, I doubled the recipe. Herein was the first problem: the ingredients.


For a mere two loaves of bread, here are some of the ingredients I had to cough up:

• 3 cups milk
• 1 entire stick of butter
• 4 yeast packets (that's almost 1/4 CUP!!!!)
• 3 eggs (should have been 4, but I'm cheap :-P)

And when it came time to add all the flour and start kneading, I knew we had a problem:

This poor Jello is waiting to go to a good home after my pantry purge.

That is one GIANT lump of dough. I was sure that those Reader's Digest nincompoops had failed to test their own recipe, because this was obviously four loaves' worth of bread! I pulled out the two biggest pans I own, divided the dough, and set it to rise.

Since I only had three loaf pans, I called up my former-classmate-now-neighbor Rachel, who graciously lent me hers. It was only after this that I looked at the recipe and found out that I was actually supposed to knead the dough again after the first rise. This reduced the enormous puff of dough back into an enormous ball... that looked big enough for two loaves. Ugh.

But I was not about pour all those ingredients and that neighborly kindness into just two loaves, so I divided the dough into three pans. The end result?

Three of the most delicious loaves I've ever eaten, chewy and moist. And nicely-sized. I am still undecided as to the what original recipe was intended to yield-- was it really for a single loaf? 

The bread was absolutely scrumptious, but if you are looking to save money on baking your own bread, you will want to skip this recipe. I was really impressed by the texture, though, so I'll be sure to revisit oatmeal bread-- with a different recipe next time!

Knead It Monday: Eat your heart out, Auntie Anne's!

I hope that you are steadfast in your New Year's resolution to exercise, because this week, I made a snack that will CHANGE.YOUR.LIFE. In fact, it's so good, I'm going to lift the recipe out of the book and give it to you!

I have this Reader's Digest book called Homemade. It's full of all sorts of recipes for cleaning agents, condiments, and beauty products-- made from ingredients you most likely already have in your house. It's a fun read for anyone interested in frugality!

The book also has a section on making your own "fast foods and snacks". One of the first recipes is for delicious, homemade pretzels.


Someone actually beat me to violating copyright laws and putting it on the web, so here's the link to the recipe, should you want to make it. And trust me, you want to make it.

This recipe only makes six pretzels. Look how small a ball of dough it produced!

One nice thing about this recipe is that it only rises once. After you punch down the dough, divide it into six pieces and let the fun begin!

I did the obligatory traditional pretzel shape, but I couldn't resist getting a little creative.

Just in case there was some confusion over who got which pretzel. :-D

Before you put the pretzels in the oven, you need to brush them with melted butter and sprinkle with salt. I used coarse kosher salt, and it turned out beautifully. You can easily overdo it with the salt, so be careful! I also got adventurous and sprinkled a couple pretzels with onion powder. Best.decision.EVER!

When I bit into the first one hot from the oven, I was simultaneously sad that I didn't make like 200 more, and thankful that I didn't.

Hooray! So here is proof that I can actually make bread. Now go and make some pretzels.