baby crap: feeding solids

ok, after a long break... another installment of baby crap...

We didn't start P on solids until she was just shy of 6 months old and really that was mostly because we were going to the pediatrician for her well baby visit soon and I didn't want to have to explain that I hadn't even tried to give her solid foods yet.  We were doing so well with the breast feeding that I really  wasn't keen on introducing another aspect of mess to my life.

Ok, so some people would say that we're "bad parents" because we didn't have a high chair and fed her sitting in the Bumbo on the kitchen table for about a month.  Go search the internet for all the opinions on why Bumbos are terrible.  Personally I say, know your kid and don't leave them in the Bumbo unattended (duh.).

This was our set up.

As you can see, like all good parents who have an IKEA nearby we have the IKEA bowls (and the plates and cups too).  At $1.99 for a set of six (each for the bowls, plates, and cups) in every color in the rainbow practically, it's a tough deal to beat.  We got the Munchkin spoons as a gift and have really liked them.  The Munchkin travel bowls, however, have not fared so well.  The edges of the lids started cracking not too long after we started using them so we got a very similar set from Gerber/Nuk (here is a link but ours are slightly different) that we've had no problems with.

Oh, so you want to know how that first bite went over.... like this...

None too pleased with the avocado (admittedly the avocados we had at the time were weird and she LOVES avocado now) or the homemade brown rice cereal.  I gave up on making my own rice cereal and we started using the Earth's Best Organic Brown Rice Cereal and eventually moved on to giving her the oatmeal and multigrain cereals as well.  She actually still eats the multigrain cereal for breakfast most days.

We started out only giving her dinner at the same time we ate and over time I added lunch, breakfast and an afternoon snack.  I only started giving her an afternoon snack shortly after she was a year old and I can't remember how long it took me to ramp up to 3 meals a day.

I feel like here is where I should mention that I made her most of her baby food.  I kept doing the math and it just made sense to me to just make the food myself.  I didn't buy too much to do it either.  I got a Kitchen Aid immersion blender which I wanted anyway but was aided by the fact that our regular blender died.  I also got the OXO baby blocks 2oz storage set which in the end was totally unnecessary because I ended up just buying more regular Rubbermaid 2 and 4 oz food storage containers and using those.  She was really only on straight pureed baby food from early October until after the start of the new year.  Oh and check out Wholesome Baby Food's website for some good ideas on what to feed babies when.

I know that I started giving her a sippy cup (or trying to) at about 7 months.

The first attempts, she didn't get it.

A little better about 3 weeks later.  

These sippy cups are made by Playtex and are virtually spill proof because they have valves in them which can make it a little challenging to figure out how to drink out of them.  So we switched over to the First Years Take & Toss cups which are intended to be travel cups though oddly we never travel with them since we just take one of the "regular" ones.  These cups don't have valves but they also don't have the handles so I guess it's a toss up as to which is easier for the child to master - holding the cup or drinking from it.  P's issue was the drinking from so the Take & Toss were easier for her and once she got the hang of those, she had no problems with the others.  I've heard a lot about babies having issues transitioning to sippy cups, we didn't have that problem which I think is entirely because she didn't have to make the switch from a bottle.  She hardly ever got bottles because that was just how our life worked out for her.

Let's see... we do like both sets of cups.  Neither are leak proof but the Playtex ones are better.  She is kind of destroying the tops of those with her teeth and her new habit of dropping them on the sidewalk during our morning walks.  So I think I will have to replace them for any future children.  The Take & Toss ones are easy to use (the lids on the others can sometimes be near impossible to get off but we've learned to just close them to the click and not keep going) but when she drops them, which is often, the lids can pop open making a mess.

As she's gotten older, she gets a lot more finger foods and feeds herself a lot.  As such we've been using the IKEA plates a lot more.  We've also been working on having her feed herself.  The Munchkin spoons are a little long for her to use so we have the Take & Toss forks and spoons which have much shorter handles.  She's been doing really well with them lately.

Here's an early attempt:

 

I just got her the Gerber Kiddy Cutlery forks (link is for the fork, knife, and spoon but you can get a 3 pack of forks) and gave her a fork for the first time last night.  She was confused.  I could have given her the forks from the Take & Toss set but they're plastic and don't look like they'd spear anything.

As for what she eats now at 14 months... just about anything we eat.  We try to give her whatever we are eating for dinner which doesn't always go over well.  I'm starting to come to the conclusion that she likes things that have a ton of flavor - taco meat, kebabs we made the other day that were smothered in Old Bay.  She loves fruit and will eat grapes, blackberries, and raspberries whole.  She tries with the strawberries but it's just easier to cut those for her.  Of course, if we would let her live on buttered English muffins, meat and cheese, she'd be pretty happy.

Back soon maybe...