I must thank thank thank you guys for your support on the previous post. Wow. Unfortunate as it is that we met because of the common bond of infertility, I feel so lucky to have you all in my life.
I would like to do something special to show how much I appreciate your friendship. I'm working on an idea.
The update on the sleep sitch is thus: still bad. But somedays if I complain about it, it just feels worse. So, you are forewarned taht I will probably blog about it again in the future. But really, enough for now.
So. Next topic.
I am interested in what you guys are feeding your ones these days.
Sacha is into the finger foods, and he loves spearing food with a fork and getting into his mouth. (I know! The kid has talent!) But he still likes his purees. I try out new foods all the time, and he always wants to try what is on our plates at dinner (or breakfast or lunch if I am eating them with him around.)
I would love to open up a discussion about food here. These are my questions. Let's have some coffee and talk!
- Anybody want to share good recipes for some older baby foods that they have had sucess with?
- What about spices?
- What are your menus like? What do you typically serve for breakfast/lunch/dinner?
- What is a typical schedule in terms of eating and drinking in a day?
- What about breastfeeding? How many times a day do you BF if you still are? And have you thought about weaning?
- What about formula/bottlefeeding?
- And cup usage?
12 comments:
So much to answer! Chicka will be 2 in April...
We have breaky, lunch and dinner usually with small snacks in between of minigo, yogurt or arrowroots. For breaky she eats mostly weetabix or shredded wheat with a banana on the side. Sometimes a piece of toast and PB. For lunch it's whatever I have around. Often it's a scrambled egg with cheese. For dinner I usually give her a variation of what we are eating.
I keep spices to a minimum. Still working on cups. I can't even get her to drink milk out of anything other than a bottle and our GP says getting milk into her is more important that getting her off the bottle so that's what we're going with (she has 2 a day). She drinks a lot of water during the day otherwise.
We love goldfish crackers and mini ricecakes for snacks too. Also, she loves smoothies if I ever get around to making them.
I don't give her much added sugar in the way of treats but I don't withhold everything either. I'm not much of a cook so what she gets is pretty straightforward. I'm all about easy. :)
hope the sleep situation gets better. if it makes you feel ANY better, my son is almost 10 months and he is nowhere sttn, and never has been. constant ear infections, teething, growth spurts - oh plus the fact that i dont believe in CIO (i just hold him while he cries). but he's such a happy baby during the day that i dont really mind. he is learning to sleep longer stretches and he will do it when he's ready.
as for food, DS is now eating pretty much all veggies and fruits, many types of grains/carbs, and some dairy products. i like to make my own mini-meatballs for him (ground beef/turkey with little herbs, apple sauce and baby cereal rolled into tiny tiny balls). he LOVES them. also banana pancakes (slice up banana like a mini-pancake, coat it in a little wheat flour or buckwheat pancake mix, and toast them in a little butter until brown). i am going to try homemade fish sticks this weekend. pasta and melted cheese is also good, so is chicken and cheese. today we had grilled cheese mini-sandwiches.
instead of pureeing veggies now, i just boil everything until tender then smoosh it with a wooden spoon or a potato masher, then run a knife through it real quick if its still too chunky. then i freeze them in cubes. so this way, its not really puree and its much chunkier for a "thicker" meal.
i'm still bf'ing. only when we get home and before bed and in the morning though. the rest of the day he gets formula at daycare (i dont pump anymore - yay!), and sometimes we try the bottle at home. we're trying to wean, but he's still only 10 months, so i'm pretty comfortable waiting another 3 months.
i just wrote a novel. sorry!
Good questions- I've been thinking the same and hope to read some great answers! I have been trying the sippy cup with little success. My son will drink (a little) water out of it, but screams and cries for his "ba-ba" if I try to put his formula in it.
My wife wrote a post about food last night so you might want to look there and at the comments for ideas.
Let's see...our 16 month old nurses from me in the morning and before bed, otherwise he gets milk in a cup. our 11 month olds still nurse or get breast milk in bottles. At a year we'll switch them to whole milk and they'll still nurse from us. Not sure when we'll officially wean but I will stop pumping at work (currently I pump 3 times a day to have enough milk for the twins).
As for foods, all of ours pretty much want to feed themselves most of the time. Well, except for breakfast - I give Little miss a yogurt (trader joe's has the best whole milk yogurts, much better than yobaby) and the boys each have a bowl of oatmeal.
Other meal ideas - sometimes it's as basic as some peas, some tofu pieces (recent blog entry about that too), some green beans and some cheese bits. They also eat a lot of grilled cheese and this weekend I tried at tuna melt which actually went ok - they all 3 ate some! The Boy loves eggs (we're waiting until a year for the little ones) and loves quiche (well except for this week he decided he no longer likes quiche - gotta love toddlers). We've also done fish sticks. We give them cut up breaded eggplant. They also like black beans. Avocado and banana mixed together is still another favorite when it comes to foods we can feed them.
For snacks they get cut up fruit (they also get that a lot w/ dinner). They also like cereal bars cut up.
Almost forgot they also get soy butter and jelly sandwiches (like bp&j - we're waiting until all the kids are a year old before introducing peanut butter since The Boy likes to put his food on his brother's tray).
I hope that helps. We're always looking for ideas so let us know if you discover any big hits at your place.
One handed typing here as I'm pumping:
on feeding, the Chieftain prefers spicy foods. So, he gets an egg scrambled w/tumeric, whole cumin, and occasionally garlic. He gets spaghetti and sauce, sometimes with chicken. He loves roasted meats and poached fish (salmon yes, tuna no)(not that I'd feed him tuna on a regular basis anyway). He'll eat potato-leek soup w/salt n pepper. He's going through a strong cheese toast phase (will it never end???). Apple is fab, banana is mostly gross. He likes oranges but not blueberries. Oh, and none of this is pureed, because in his world that's absolutely disgusting. He detests baby cereal, but Cheerios rawk.
Drinking from acup has been very slow process because he has a tendency to inhale as he drinks, leading to red-faced coughing and choking. Not fun for mommy. He hates his sippy cup and prefers our glasses or cups. I've been using one of those tiny shallow sauce bowls that come with Japanese rice bowls/sushi sets as I can control the amount of water better.
Oh, and teething biscuits? Forget Earth's Best, go for Healthy Times as they are super had and he won't be able to bite off big chunks (heck, even I ahve trouble with them).
And he's still drinking milk even as I, sob, wean myself from the pump. He drinks milk and formula, but is probably down to about 20oz in a 24 hour period.
Oh, Chiref\tan just turned 1 - i started him on egg around 11mos1w
He doesn't get sweet food apart from fruit n tylenol.
First I have to say I work so I don't do a lot of extra cooking for the baby.
Mason will be one tomorrow and over the last couple of weeks has grown increasingly picky. He use to eat anything pureed, but refuses it now. He loves to eat though and I never know if he is full. For breakfast he eats whole grain blueberry waffles or cheerios, bananas and sometimes strawberries. He was also eating oatmeal with some pureed fruit added, but has started refusing that as well as refusing any yogurt (which use to be his favorite). His lunch and dinner menus vary, but generally he will eat any kind of chicken, turkey, cheese, pasta, loves red pasta sauce, turkey meatballs, sweet potatoes (I try to do these at least once a day because it is an easy one to get him to eat), corn, peas, green beans, red and green peppers, brown rice, red skinned potatoes, pretty much any and every fruit, salmon, grilled tuna. The current problem we have is he'll love something for a little while and then suddenly turn his nose up at it. In a jam I give him some Gerber toddler meals and he LOVES those!
He is currently taking formula from a bottle in the morning and at night. At day care they give him some in a cup. I'm going to switch to whole milk this weekend and hopefully stop the bottles all together. He would have been fine to stop them already, but I was the one having a hard time stopping it because it seems to be our best cuddle time.
During the day I give him water in a sippy cup and once a day I will do a little splash of juice.
If our food is really spicy I don't give it to him otherwise he eats whatever is in our food. Stuff that is just for him I don't add anything to.
Go Sacha - He's got mad skills with a fork.
i am bookmarking this post.
As we are also at these crossroads.
I am still desparately trying to get MT to take a sippy cup (of any kid) with water in it. I have tried to put a spalsh of juice in it but that doesnt work much either.
I am out of our stock of bm and he weaned himself at 7 months so it is formula for him. Although he won't drink more than 12oz of formula a day. SO i have been trying to up the water intake. I recently have been researching hemp milk. Bought a sample at our health foodstore. Haven't tried it yet.
Breakfast usually includes a fruit (banana, bluberry, cut/peeled grapes, pureed mango, mushed apples) and either a whole milk yogurt, waffle,toast, dry rice cereal(like chex)
Lunch - been known to cut up in tiny pieces of a grilled cheese, chopped up chicken, pasta, and a veggie (steamed broccolli, grean beans, asparagus, vut up cucumber) something green, avocado and banana.
Dinner - usually whatever meat we are having, sweet potato, lentils, mushed apple, pastas with cheese or tomato sauces, home made veggie/beef soups
I also just found an organic whole milk cottage cheese I am going to try. I haven't introduced eggs yet. But would love to soon
I can't remember how old Sacha is... Caden is 21 months now but he stopped eating pureed foods at about 11.-12 months, nostly because he refused to let me feed him anymore and couldn't use a spoon yet. So we were onto finger foods.
He will eat toast, oatmeal, cheerios, waffles or fruit and yogurt for breakfast.
Grilled cheese, crackers cheese humus and fruit, soup, ham and cheese sandwhich, or canned pasta for lunch
for dinner I give him whatever we are having cut into much smaller pieces.
I have never made separate meals for him. He loves mildly spicy stuff (I don't give it to him if it his hot) for example he loves humus, mild butter chicken, fajita's and tonight he ate indian vegetarian curry. In fact, he won't eat plainer foods, espicially potatoes.
I think kids are all about what you introduce them to. The one thing is Caden is a fruitomaniac. He eats fruit with breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. Which is good because he eats a limited number of veggies.
At almost 15 months, Kali eats everything we eat. This week she tried some of my "chili" (kidney beans cooked in medium salsa, with lots of shredded cheddar mixed in) and totally gobbled it up. She loves cumin and garlic. So as far as spices go, we just let her taste. Actually, at shabbat dinner she was eyeing the horseradish, so we gave her a taste on some challah. Instant hit!
We eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner, with a snack in between meals. Breakfast is often a banana with oatmeal, or a piece of bagel with hummus. Lunch can be eggs, or sometimes pancakes, or pasta in tomato sauce. Dinner is whatever we're having, cut into small pieces. Snacks are usually a cut up fruit or vegetable, and some kind of carb (pita, dry cereal, crackers).
We nurse once a day, first thing in the morning. She drinks milk from bottles and sippy cups all day long.
Hope that helped!
Wait, seriously? Your ELEVEN MONTH OLD uses a fork? My eighteen month olds do not use forks. AT ALL.
Good heavens, you have a super genius for a baby.
I'm going to go bury my head in the sand now with my three underacheivers.
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