Review – Baby-Led Weaning

Baby-Led Weaning: The Essential Guide to Introducing Solid Foods-and Helping Your Baby to Grow Up a Happy and Confident Eater

by Gill Rapley, Tracey Murkett, published 2010

If you pay close attention to certain parenting and child development texts, you are likely to notice one of two paradigms at work– the exogenous development approach and the endogenous development approach. Those are fancy words I just thought up to say something simple, which is that you either believe children can develop pretty well on their own, with parents simply playing a nurturing, supporting role; or else you believe that children are mostly helpless to develop on their own, with parents playing a primary, directorial role.

The idea of “Baby-Led Weaning” (BLW) falls firmly into the endogenous development model, along with other philosophies we fancy such as RIE for parent-infant communication and relationship building, self-esteem centered personal growth philosophy, Montessori for educational and pedagogical practice, and nutrition-based health and well-being (ie, vaccine-skepticism). People who take the BLW approach to transitioning their infant to solids, aka “adult food”, see linear continuity between the infant’s ability to feed themselves at the breast and the later skill of the toddler being capable of feeding themself at the table. The BLW user asks the question, “Why should there need to be a period in the child’s eating skills development where they regress to parental intervention with mush and spoon?”

The actual practice of BLW doesn’t require more than a paragraph to describe. So long as your infant has reached the motor skill maturity to sit up on their own (or you are willing to prop them up on your lap for the duration of their “meal”), you can put a small variety of 2-inch long, stick-shaped food items from the adult meal in front of them and let them choose what and how they’d like to eat. If they want more, you can offer them more as they go. The first few weeks and months of learning to eat actually consists of them “playing” with their food by exploring taste, texture, smell and other properties of the foodstuffs– only later do they discover that the food is nutritious and helps to satiate their hunger. Plan on letting them discover at their own pace, cleaning up the inevitable messes and continuing to provide most of their sustenance by breast or bottle until they’re fully capable of getting the majority of their calories and nutrients from shared family meals, likely past the one year of age mark.

That’s really it. While there are certain foods that are easy to choke on (grapes not cut in half length-wise! hard nuts which are difficult to chew! pieces of fish or animal flesh with sharp bone fragments!) and things children may develop allergies to if exposed too early (honey! dairy! peanut butter?!), like the risk of rolling over and crushing an infant via co-sleeping being almost nil for a family that does not consist of alcoholic cigarette smoking fat asses, BLW is essentially safe and the risk of choking is overblown. It turns out that infants have a gag reflex that begins near the front of their tongue and not the back, and most “choking” actually happens with spoon-fed infants wherein the eating utensil circumvents the natural choke-avoidance mechanism and allows food to get into the back of their throat when they haven’t fully developed the muscle control to swallow.

Like most endogenous approaches, the biggest challenge for parents and other adult-caretakers is having patience to let the infant explore at their leisure and behave as comes naturally without thinking they need to get involved and add something to the mix for any reason other than safety. The temptation to “help” the child learn to eat or to show them a more “efficient” way to get the food into their mouth, for example, must be avoided if the child is to develop the important motor skills of controlling food with their hands, not to mention the need to let the child determine that food is safe and enjoyable to eat. Chewing and sucking endlessly on the same piece of sweet potato stick may not seem like an effective way to eat one’s meal for us, but for the infant it is an essential part of figuring out “What is this?” and “What can I do with it?” Infants are highly empirical and don’t really have an ability to learn by causal explanation and the provision of logical theory. They need to just do stuff on their own.

The book is much longer than a paragraph because it spends a lot of time repeating itself, calming potentially frayed nerves concerning overwrought risks, relating a series of “BLW Stories” of parents who did it with their small kids and had success, and interjecting numerous verbatims from happy practitioners seemingly at random in an attempt to build credibility in the approach. This last bit is likely aimed at female readers– sorry moms, but your cultural appropriation model is highly consensus-based due to evolutionary biology.

A good primer for anyone interested in the approach, though you can skim-read it.

Why I Try To Avoid Visits To The Doctor’s Office

I don’t go to the doctor much. I think that’s a good thing, but people who believe “an ounce of prevention beats a pound of cure” might be horrified to know that I don’t even do my so-called oil changes and other regularly scheduled maintenances with regards to my body– false positives, risk of complications from the cure that are worse than the disease, etc.

Generally, if I’m not in pain, I’m not going to see a doctor. And even sometimes when I am, I think, “This too shall pass” and carry on. I pay attention to my body, I’ve gotten pretty good at knowing when I’m in trouble versus experiencing discomfort that will resolve itself over time. I have a pretty high pain threshold I think, I won’t even mention I have a headache until I’m somewhere around a migraine for someone else.

And I do believe in prevention! That’s why I eat a nutrient rich diet, exercise (weight lifting) weekly and walk my dog daily. That’s why I work hard to keep a reasonable bed time and get as much sleep as I can. That’s why I try to think happy thoughts and help others do the same. And that’s why I listen to my body and take it easy when it tells me “No!”, rather than flailing myself before the altar of No Pain, No Gain and reveling in masochistic torture.

So I do my darnedest to avoid visiting a doctor. That’s why I’m bummed I decided to go in today, and that’s why I think this decision was yet again illustrative of my principles!

You see, where I live, medicine is practiced a bit oddly– legal liability dictates that the doctor does anything he can to avoid taking responsibility for your treatments and it’s consequences, as they don’t want to be sued for malpractice. But their medical school instruction plus their ever closer relationship with the State leads them to an aggravated mindset anytime you insist on thinking for yourself and following your own judgment. Think about that, they don’t want you to make your own choice, but they don’t want to be responsible for the choice you make.

I had some kind of strange reaction to an insect bite on the back of my calf last night. I don’t know how it happened or what bit me, I’ve never seen anything like this on my leg, nor felt this kind of pain, which is severe but within my tolerance levels. Normally, I’d just keep walking around and unless it seemed to worsen or I showed other symptoms, I’d just let time work it’s magic on healing it. Painful, yes, but nothing my body can’t handle.

Unfortunately, my plan was to travel out of town for the holiday this week to spend time with family. If my condition worsened, I might end up in an ER in a strange place. I don’t want to end up in an ER, and certainly not in a strange place. As a result, I decided to visit the GP at the last minute to see if they thought it looked dangerous. If it was going to kill me or save my tissue, I’d want to intervene, but anything short of that I’d just make do.

I should’ve just kept on going and took my chances.

The doctor squeezed me in, which I’m very grateful for. But because I hadn’t seen them in over ten years, they subjected me to a battery of questions about my health, my family’s health, and so on. I spent 20 minutes talking about everything but my bite and about one minute actually discussing the course of action about the bite.

I got lectured about the need to do regular check ups. I got lectured about treatments available for some historical conditions, as if I was unaware, hadn’t tried them and was suffering needlessly (because the assumption is I don’t take care of my health). I witnessed the doctor exhibit some unhealthy conditions of her own and then was told not to worry, wasn’t contagious, etc.

The worst mistake I made was mentioning that my wife is pregnant and nearing her due date.

“When did you last get your tetanus shot?”

This is a terrifying question. Something innocuous like this, ostensibly asked our of concern for my health and the health of my family, could lead to a spiral where either the baby snatchers come for my kid, or I submit to vaccinations and other invasive treatments I don’t have any interest in.

She continued, “I don’t mean to alarm you, but EIGHT babies in the whole state died last year because of whooping cough connected to tetanus, likely contracted from a parent or relative who didn’t get their shots. I wouldn’t want you to be one of them!”

When she said 8 in the whole state, I wanted to laugh. Are you kidding? I probably have more risk driving my baby around in its car seat (don’t worry, she lectured me about that, too). And its probably not PC to say, but I doubt those babies had my socioeconomic background (ie, I’m wealthier and I don’t have relatives traveling back and forth to third world countries or other impoverished areas). It’s simply not reasonable to be worried about this risk, measured against the potential complications.

“It’s really quick and out nurse is great with shots, can I go ahead and get that taken care of for you?”

No, thanks, I’m traveling and don’t want to deal with it right now.

“Okay no problem, I’ll put a note in your file that you’re going to come back in two weeks and take care of it. Due to state mandate, they won’t let you go near your baby if you don’t have an up to date tetanus shot.”

I sure hope I don’t get that call.

Saturday Morning With A Nutritionist

One of the required classes at the birth center is Nutrition 101. Now, readers who are family/friends of ours know that we have some “particular” opinions on what is optimal nutrition! We tend to eat a more traditional diet, and we have been eating this way for about five or six years now. Nutrition (and being more strict about it) has only increased in significance for us as we’ve prepared for conception and pregnancy. I went to this class with pretty low expectations because I’ve heard and read the basic guidelines about what to/not to eat during pregnancy, and they often do not parallel the research I’ve done on optimal nutrition. I was pleasantly surprised!

The nutritionist who came to speak to us introduced her philosophy as primarily “paleo,” and she included references to Weston A Price throughout her talk. She said that she used to be a fitness coach but also suffered pretty severe cases of acne and poor health, despite following all the recommended regimens in the fitness world and experimenting with vegetarianism. Both unfortunately and fortunately, she got into a car accident and needed to see a chiropractor, who introduced to her a different way of eating. He asked for her for a food journal, to which she boasted that she was super healthy, eating microwavable meals, whole grain bagels with low fat cream cheese, Starbucks with coconut milk, etc. She credits him with changing her life because he was the one who showed her that not all fats are bad, but all processed foods are! Oh, bonus, she was a really good and interesting speaker who kept me engaged throughout her two hour talk 🙂

The key points that I thought was interesting and that reinforced my own nutrition principles:

• Eat organic and locally grown — The chemicals that are used to treat the soil and plants are toxic, avoid as much as possible. Eating local means you’ll likely eat what is in season and optimally nutritious at that time. Eating ripe fruit/veggies versus eating produce that has been picked long before they’re ready, flash-frozen, and transported across the country means less interference and less “processed”! I am very thankful we live in California where fresh, clean produce is valued and available to us!
• Eat cooked AND raw foods — Eating foods in its natural state helps preserve its nutritious potency! Furthermore, overcooked and burnt foods are actually toxic.
• 80/20 rule — If you are able to follow a nutrient-dense diet 80% of the time, then it’s okay to indulge once in awhile. It’s not worth it to be stressed about what you eat, and it’s almost impossible to eat 100% clean anyway. The nutritionist did emphasize that even treats should be of high quality. For example, whole-fat, creamy ice cream versus fake, man-made “skinny cow” ice cream bars. I follow more of a 90/10 (or 95/5, on a good week…) rule because… Why not eat cleaner if you can?
• Eat a variety — Nutrients are everywhere in fruits, veggies, dairy, meats, so to ensure that we get all the good vitamins our bodies need, we need to eat a variety of foods! Additionally, many vitamins and nutrients need each other to be better absorbed by our bodies (e.g., protein, Vitamin C, and zinc all work together to build collagen, helping our skin to bounce back from stretching during pregnancy 😉
• Water — Drink approximately half your body weight in ounces. Just as how standardized tests are lame, standardized water recommendations are also lame!
• From dietary habits to lifestyle — As your dietary habits change to be more traditional, optimal, and “primal,” you may find yourself making other lifestyle changes to become more like Grok! 😀

Some other things I learned and found valuable from this Nutrition class:

• Apple cider vinegar for acid reflux — 2 teaspoons of ACB with 1-2 cups of water to supplement the stomach acid in digestion. I also drink kombucha, which helps a lot too. The nutritionist recommends consuming ahead of time if you know you’re going to have a big indulgent meal.
• Vitamin C binge before delivery — This helps strengthen veins and can be found in the white parts of citrus fruits.
• Good sources of sulfuric veggies — …include broccoli, cauliflower, and kale.
• RAW MILK — While she could not loudly proclaim her support for this (I’m assuming for legal/certification reasons…), she mentioned that if a woman is used to drinking raw milk and can find a reputable source, it is absolutely necessary and beneficial to consume for conception and during pregnancy (and for life, I imagine!).

EDIT:

Funny thing I noticed: The nutritionist had brought some snacks for us to munch on during the seminar because it was early in the morning, and I guess she figured pregnant women are always snacking. She brought in a box of Annie’s cheese crackers, a box of Cliff whole grain chocolate chip protein bars, and a container of pre-chopped veggies with a container of ranch dressing. And then later, she used her box of Annie’s crackers as an example of questionable organic choices (I guess not all ingredients in organic Annie’s cheese crackers are organic?), and she recommended against processed, whole grains (aka a box of granola bars…).  The nutritionist seemed have thought a lot of things through… But not everything yet, apparently! 😉

Notes – Real Food for Mother and Baby

Real Food for Mother and Baby

by Nina Planck, published 2016

This was one of the first books I read on fertility/pregnancy because we already had it in our library (see The Lion’s review of it).  Planck’s book dispelled some commonly held beliefs on what pregnant can/cannot consume and further confirmed that the way I eat currently is optimal to maintaining good health. Some interesting/important points I found throughout her book:

• Exercising during pregnancy is good for mother and baby. Walking, running, swimming, dancing, cycling, rowing, hiking–but never to the point of fatigue. Listen to your body and rest as needed.
• In the second trimester, the growing baby needs protein and calcium to build bone and muscle, so take cod liver oil, eat protein and saturated fats, and drink milk and eat sour cream and cheeses. Raw is better than pasteurized, and supplements are not as effective. Drink the best milk you can afford.
• Swelling in the hands and feet is a sign of protein deficiency, so try to eat 100g daily of meat/poultry (skin + bones), fish, eggs, and milk.
• Salt your food freely (with unrefined sea salt) because blood and amniotic fluid are briny! And eat plenty of fresh produce for potassium
• Keep up the calcium intake even though the baby’s skeleton has formed by six months because the bones are still bulking up. Eat oysters and beef for zinc, and eat protein (meat, dairy, eggs) to prevent swelling and prematurity. Obviously, drink lots of water and eat tons of fish to aid in baby’s brain development!
• “Don’t avoid fish, just methylmercury.” No shark, swordfish, King mackerel, or tilefish. Two to three times per week, consume anchovy, common mackerel, salmon, catfish, trout, tilapia (wild caught and fresh) and be generous with the butter and cream (creamy clam chowder for days, yum…).
• On Birth Day: the atmosphere should be dark, private, and quiet. After birth, hold the baby naked against your skin and ask to delay bathing and weighing. Let the baby look at you, smell you. Newborns aren’t dirty, but if bathing is necessary, do so gently without removing the white stuff (vernix). Try not to cut the cord until the placenta is delivered.
• The mama’s hormones are working on realigning after birth, so emotions may still be up and down. Continue the diet of red meat, fish, and liver to prevent worsening the baby blues.
• Get lots of help on practical matters so you can gently surrender to your baby’s needs, unpredictable as they are.
• Breastfeed [exclusively] if possible (and for as long as possible! At least for 6-12 mos) because breastmilk contains probiotics, antibodies, amylase, and boosts immunity for the newborn. Keep eating well.
• From four to ten months (once they can sit up), babies can try real food, as long as theres not vomiting or diarrhea. At seven months, the baby can eat seafood, pork and dairy. At one year, time for the baby to start his/her cod liver oil supplements!
• Let the baby choose what he/she wants to eat, don’t micromanage/point/stare/direct. Do less, RELAX.
• Surrender your old life temporarily to be the mother that nature intended. Ask for help (cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping), and nurse on cue (aka when the baby asks).
• Watch the baby, not the clock! There is no schedule for breastfeeding.
• Bread and chocolate (grains and sugar) are inevitable, so try to find ones with good, clean ingredients. Let your child know over time why you favor certain foods over others. Try not to let the child fill up on bread before fats and protein.

TL;DR Avoid trans fats and pesticides. Buy organics and avoid hydrogenated vegetable oils, margarine, vegetable shortening, and cheap fried foods.

TL;DR2 Breast feed your baby. Nurse after the baby starts eating. Delay or skip vaccinations. Spend time on farms and outside in the dirt. Touch animals. Drink raw milk.

Video – The Truth About Breastfeeding

We plan to breastfeed our infant. This video provides a lot of information about the benefits of breastfeeding. It doesn’t discuss any “risks”, although I am not sure that is a meaningful concept when analyzing an evolutionary biology-based parenting practice. Below the video is a summary of some of the key points if you do not wish to watch the video:

• The benefits of breastfeeding imply exclusive use, ie, no supplementation with bottle feeding, formula or solid foods
• Breast milk is the most complete form of nutrition for infants; it also allows the mother to pass her antibodies to the baby to improve its immunity to disease
• The skin-to-skin contact of breastfeeding creates hormonal release that leads to bonding
• Breastfeeding is connected to improved brain development in infants (compared to non-breastfeeding), especially with regards to language development, emotional function and cognition
• The hormonal release also assists with post-partum healing of the mother’s body and delays the return of ovulation during breastfeeding, preserving the mother’s stores of iron and creating “natural” spacing between pregnancies
• Childbearing and breastfeeding have shown significant decreases in a woman’s risk of developing different forms of cancer in clinical studies

Review – Real Food For Mother And Baby

Real Food For Mother And Baby

by Nina Planck, published 2009

For me, reading this book simply resulted in confirming a lot of biases I already have regarding ideal nutritional practices. Those confirmed biases could be reduced down to:

• make most of what you eat yourself
• when eating animals, use as much of the animal as you can (including bone, skin, organs, etc.)
• when eating fruits and vegetables, use what is in season when possible
• focus on organics and other traditionally raised and cultivated foods
• avoid eating things that were not regularly consumed 100 years ago
• avoid anything processed, “packaged” sweetened or artificially preserved
• eat more fat than you’re “supposed to” and don’t get your nutritional advice from headline news or the government

There’s more to it than that, but that’s a good start to revolutionizing the way most moderns/Americans eat in the West.

The book is essentially 200pgs of these broad outlines and a few more specific guidelines, along with basic scientific information on why this is the right way to eat and how various research agrees. The advice is good for women (and men) planning to conceive, women in pregnancy, nursing mothers and babies ready to eat things besides breast milk.

In other words, the “best” diet for fertility, childbirth and infancy, is also the best diet for children and adults in terms of achieving optimum health outcomes and maximizing genetic fitness and expression.

The weakest part of the book is the author’s condoning of various “cheats” and nutritional oversights based on the arbitrary logic of “a little poison now and then won’t kill you”, and it was a let down to learn that after following these nutritional practices she still ended up getting drugged out and giving birth by C-section during her own pregnancy.

Mothers to be will probably find the affirmative tone and validative diction of the book enjoyable. And for some this will be a revelation. For me, I didn’t get a lot new. It did get me to think about how hopeless health (and intelligence?) outcomes must be for generations of people in communities without the knowledge, incentives or resources to eat this way. It also got me thinking about how easy it is to overdo good nutrition, to obsess about it and give it undue consideration. It’s important, yet spending your life on feeding yourself doesn’t leave time for much else which to me is like luxurious primitivism.

Experiencing Pregnancy as a Woman

(The Lion’s version: Experiencing Pregnancy as a Man)

It’s funny how greetings change as your life does. I went from hearing, “How’s wedding planning going?” every day for a year until our wedding date to “How are you feeling?” now that I’ve announced my pregnancy on social media. I guess it is more personal than the “How are you today?” that we receive every where so I can’t complain. Plus, most of the people who have asked me how I am feeling are genuinely curious and ready to hear me explain how I’m actually feeling, and for that patience and thoughtfulness, I am grateful and appreciative.

My pregnancy (17 weeks, day 1 today) has been great so far.  It hasn’t been all great these last four months, as I’ve had about 3-4 outstanding rough days (including one day of pretty terrible morning sickness) that included headache and crankiness and feeling generally uncomfortable, but overall, I feel happy and content.

I don’t feel like there has been a [huge] shift in my personality or mood, although I have noticed that I am crankier when I don’t get 2-3 naps in throughout the day. I am eating slightly less meat (I used to eat about a half pound of protein per meal), I find that I crave vegetables more (salads, veggie sticks and dip, and more salads), and I prefer to eat smaller meals throughout the day rather than three big meals (read: I love snacks!). I haven’t had any weird cravings for dirt, chalk, fast food, tuna ice cream, or much sweet stuff (now, that’s not to say that I wouldn’t eat In-N-Out if it was right in front of me!). And I’ve found that if I DO have cravings for fast food or sweet stuff, I can find something else desirable to snack on, like apples and almond butter or a couple pieces of dark chocolate or some cheese and nuts, and feel satisfied enough to stave off the craving. I am also continuing my aerial dance workouts. Mostly because I see all of my good friends there, but also because I always leave the class feeling accomplished and happy. I used to train “hardcore,” approximately 3-4x per week for 1-3hours each time, but I’ve noticed a mental shift since I’ve been pregnant: my desire is no longer to “train” or learn new death-defying tricks, but rather to perfect the basics (like learning to do the same moves but on my less dominant side), to feel the music, and to just dance. I think this helps me to tune into what my body is feeling, and it has helped me to gain acceptance of the changes that’s going on physically and mentally. It also helps a lot that many women who are in my classes are moms themselves and have also experienced this change!

I believe a lot of what is contributing to my positive experience of pregnancy so far is my diet and exercise regimen. I eat a lot of protein (grass-fed, pasture-raised, wild-caught) and fresh vegetables (organic), and I eat a little fruit (also organic, and seasonal) for dessert. I drink fresh squeezed orange juice, whole milk (raw milk, occasionally), and homemade bone broth and kombucha. I exercise every day by taking our dog on a morning walk and an afternoon walk (sometimes also an evening walk, but a lot of times I’m asleep already :), and I am at the aerial fitness studio 3-4x per week stretching, dancing, and weight training.

I am also preparing mentally and emotionally by reading a variety of books on pregnancy nutrition, child birthing, and child raising (all to be reviewed on this blog at a later date…). These books help give me an idea of what to expect, realistically, and how to accept these changes instead of fighting them. I believe that because I have this knowledge of what pregnancy is like, I am less anxious about what is happening to my body. Furthermore, being prepared with a plan on how we want to raise our child means less stress during pregnancy!

Now, on to research about what pregnancy pillow is best for sleeping…

Cefalù, Erice, Segesta, and Rome (Sicily/Italy)

Our last few days in Italy were spent in Cefalù, Sicily…

We had anticipated staying a little bit closer to Palermo, but it turned out we were about an hour away from the big city. Cefalù is located in northern Sicily, next to the Tyrrhenian Sea. I think we ran into less American tourists, but the city was still crowded with a lot of European tourists!

The first thing we saw in Cefalù was The Cathedral. I didn’t go into the cathedral (the Lion did), but what I’ve read about it is that the cathedral was built around the 1100s in the Norman style, as the Normans came and conquered Sicily in the early 1090s. We noticed that the two towers flanking the front/sides of the church were asymmetrical: one tower had a pyramid on top and merlons (the little “window” between posts on castle walls), modeled after the hats of bishops, and the other tower had a rounder “cone” on top (Wikipedia says it’s “octagonal”) and another type of merlon (Ghibelline). …I don’t really understand all the architectural terms myself, but the point is, this cathedral had two different towers, one to represent the Papal authority and the other to represent the Royal authority.

The next day, our driver/tour guide drove us over to Segesta, an ancient city that was once occupied by indigenous Sicilians (Elymians?), Romans, and Muslims. According to our guide, the people of this ancient city were a peaceful folk and relied heavily on their sea port for trade and sustenance. Eventually, of course, Segesta was targeted because of their prime location to the port, and Greek forces began to move in to conquer the area. The people of this ancient city knew they couldn’t handle the conflict themselves, so they sought the help of Carthaginians. Carthage came to their aid and destroyed the Greek city who was looking to conquer Segesta, but instead of eliminating Segesta’s enemy, this victory had the opposite effect. Other Greek cities, angered at this outcome, came to the aid of Selinus, and they all fell on Segesta at once, virtually wiping out all inhabitants of the area. What’s left today are remnants of a sort of “marketplace,” a Greek theater, a Muslim mosque indicating that Muslims inhabited the area at one time, and an unfinished Doric temple.

The 5th century temple is quite an impressive sight, despite it being unfinished. You can see it as you’re driving up to this ancient city and from the ancient city. Located on an adjacent hill from the city ruins, it has six by fourteen stone columns and is raised on a platform with at least three steps. We know that the temple is unfinished because there is no roof, and the columns are still rough and have yet to be “fluted” (the shallow grooves that are commonly found on columns of this style). Additionally, the tabs that were carved into the blocks to make transporting the stones easier have yet to be filed away for the smooth, finished look.

Our next stop was Erice, where I think we had the best meal during the entire trip. I ordered a pasta dish from Ristorante Donte S. Giuliano, and it was perfect. Pasta is always perfectly al dente in Italy, but something about the pasta, sauce, and cheese really made this dish a home run. Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of the dish or the restaurant except for this entrance picture, but that is a cliff-top restaurant I won’t forget about anytime soon!

We walked around Erice without much of an agenda, just enjoying being there and learning about whatever we came across. We eventually made it to the Castle of Venus, a Norman-period castle that was built on top of a temple of Venus. The castle/temple was partially covered with scaffolding and tourists, but the views up there were amazing. I only wish we had a knowledgeable guide to tell us more about this castle as were walking around it…

On our last day in Cefalù, the Lion and I went to walk the main streets and ate lunch at a restaurant who had a dock that extended far out into the sea (well, “far out” relative to the coast and other restaurants). It was pretty nice to be so far away from the hustle and bustle and enjoying delicious Sicilian cuisine!

The next morning, we boarded an early flight to head over to Rome for the day before flying home to the US. We only had about 12 hours in Rome, so we hit up some tourist destinations without the intent of going in to learn about its history. We walked through the Piazza Navona to see the Pantheon, the Colosseum, the Trevi Fountain, the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelias (one of the Lion’s idols), a replica of the Romulus and Remus statue, the Typewriter (Altare della Patria or Altar of the Fatherland), and the Roman Forum ruins. I won’t try to summarize the history of it all because I don’t think I spent enough time at each of those places, but it was a really neat experience and a trip I’d love to do again so that I can see it all again without a time limit.

We stopped by this really neat gastropub in Rome, at the recommendation of the Lion’s sister who had studied abroad in Rome earlier in the summer. I only sipped some of the Lion’s beers, but the food was really unique. We had cheese wrapped in pumpkin flowers drizzled with balsamic, a variety of cheeses with honey or hot sauce, caprese salad, bruschetta with eggplant, figs with a slice of cheese and a dot of balsamic, salami-wrapped toast, liver sausage, a sweet sausage (tasted like Chinese sausage, “lap cheung”), more bruschetta with either red peppers, cabbage, or green peppers, and delicious homemade Italian “ginger snap-doodles” (that’s just what I’m calling them because they reminded me of ginger snaps with the texture of snickerdoodles). Uh-maze.

And that concludes our Italy trip! I would like to do a sort of “reflections” post on our time in Italy, but that might not be until the Lion and I have a breather from travelling/TSA/jetlag/cramped seating/hotel beds/living out of a suitcase…

At The Cabbage (Wisconsin)

I always thought of myself as a city girl.

Born and raised in St. Louis, schooled in St. Louis, worked in Dallas, living in Orange County. And Winston-Salem, a step off a beaten path.

The past few days, the Lion and I have been hanging out with his extended family at a beautiful cabin by the lake in Door County, Wisconsin. I don’t know how much you know about Door County (I hadn’t even heard of it before), but apparently it is THE place to go if you’re a Chicagoan.

The towns here are so small that I only have 1G on my phone (I didn’t even know 1G existed)! We spent our time here talking and eating with everyone, enjoying the views, playing video games, and of course, playing Settlers of Catan.

One morning, we got to visit the sheep from a nearby sheep farm (“wool farm”?) run by a couple who also hosts a b&b. The couple, Gretchen and Dick, are wonderful people, and their sheep are sweethearts who aren’t afraid to come up to you and ask for kisses (or give you kisses if you happen to be squatting down for a picture!)! The Lion and I have visited a small variety of backyard and larger farms, and they never cease to amaze and inspire us. I am really looking forward to having chickens and goats in our future backyard, and of course some herbs and flowers and vegetables and fruits too (fertilized naturally by our animals and compost bin). I think the quality and freshness of homegrown, organic foods just can’t be beat (plus the animals are extremely entertaining).

But let’s be real, there are some real downsides to Wisconsin country life too: the least powerful shower head I’ve ever experienced, lack of organic produce, fruits, and free-range protein, a heavy emphasis on breads and sugars, and no internet or cell reception…

While many compromises were made, being in a secluded place was enjoyable still because we could hear the water and the trees, breathe in clean air, see all the stars, and enjoy the company and warmth of a wonderful family (and their little canine and bat friends) around a bonfire.

Sometimes it’s good to get away from the city for a bit, girl.

Tempus Fugit

The grandfather clock in the dining room of this little B&B we’re staying at in Wisconsin bears the timeless wisdom, “Tempus Fugit”. I had to look that one up on my phone, it sounded familiar but I couldn’t remember exactly what it meant.

I have a feeling this trip will involve another expression, “Feast or famine”, and quite literally so. We’re used to eating a certain way at home, and while we’re all about experiencing the local fare, unfortunately the local fare seems to vary wildly in terms of quality and quantity in each place we go.

Sicily I think will be more of a feast place. Wisconsin is seeming more like a famine place. Of course, there’s plenty of soda and beer and such!

The time with family here is welcome. But luckily, time flies, so we won’t have to worry about the famine for too long…

This, too, shall pass?