Monday 14 April 2008

I want to talk about food today.
I've been dutifully feeding her mashed up steamed vegetables, stewed and raw fruits and the usual suspects of cereals (boy does she not like those!). She also gets the occasional arrowroot cookie and she had yogurt for the first time today.
My question is, when do I get to feed her real food? You know, the stuff that I eat - ground up of course.
Is there an order I should introduce meats?
Can I cook stuff for her in oil?
Joe and I have no real food allergies, do we still have to keep to that 3 or more days between introducing new foods rule?
I'm having trouble picturing how to go from steamed sweet potato to, say, lasagne.
Any insight will be appreciated.

Further on the food topic, I bought one of the best things last week. I know Craftygrrrl uses one and Rocketbride also mentioned it, so after a small choking scare, I went out and got one of these:


All the parents I know with kids older than five are amazed.
I can now give her an apple slice or cookie and not have to keep an eye on how much of it is missing or constanly sweep her mouth for the large chunks she's broken off.

I also got some foam tiles for her to play on now that she likes to be on the floor more. I had been searching for some for weeks now, but either they were hideously expensive at the kids stores or my local hardware stores didn't carry them.
I was getting resigned to not getting any when I went and checked out my local Dollarama. These are smaller (approx 1 foot square) than the ones I was seeing in the boutique stores, and part of me is afraid that they're a lot more toxic as well. But hey, they were $1 each! I got 12 of them. They don't cover that much ground, but then, neither does she right now.
If we didn't have 3 pukey cats I probably wouldn't bother, but between that and the fact that she's bouncing her head off the floor regularly these days, I figure it's a good investment.

We've got weeks 30, 31 and 32 shots. You can see the tiles in these shots.




3 comments:

Jen said...

hey dollface:

www.wholesomebabyfoods.com

Love it - there's a number of links to La leche league and WHO and the advertising is on the benign side so I'm trusting it pretty thoroughly - I also have a number of books.

It will be awhile before she's hogging down on lasagna - proteins (particularly meat) are one of the last groups to introduce.

unless she gets her hands on some beef and loooooooooves it lol

xoox

Anonymous said...

I have two really good books on exactly this topic (I should have remembered this when we saw you guys).

The book you need to look for is called Better Baby Food and it is by the staff at Sick Kids. (heck you may already have it).

http://www.shopsickkids.com/pc-62-9-better-baby-food.aspx

Really useful resource including tips and recipes. I would suspect Parentbooks might have it. I suspect they will have other resources as well...

Anonymous said...

I hate to say this but before there was baby food and food mills, babies survived impressively well. Our first child started on solid food by attacking and having a grand time with a whole wheat bun(at 4 months I recall). After that she got food from our plates, nothing she could aspirate (peanuts primarily). Some pre-chewed but mostly the stuff she demanded. I tried baby food with her a couple of times and she refused. If it didn't come from mommy or daddy's plate it didn't count as food.

Better Baby food is an AWESOME resource. I second that nomination.

The things I would avoid feeding her are the things I will avoid feeding my kids til they leave the house, pure sugar and highly processed foods.

Otherwise, if she wants it, give to her. The choke reflex is remarkably effective at keeping things out that shouldn't be going down their little throats. They know better than drs what they can eat and when, one easy clue is with meat. They can't digest it early on, if it went in the mouth too soon, it always came right back out again. Both our kids had exactly the same response.