In the beginning it was so simple and carefree - just occasionally handed the boy a bit of what I was eating if I happened to be eating something healthy for him. He loved food from the start and is keen to get his hands on things and explore.
A few weeks on we began introducing one regular meal a day - breakfast. Things began to get a bit more hard work. No more breast feeding him in bed and then rolling over and falling back asleep again - now I have to get up and make cereal. The plus side is I now eat breakfast myself a lot more often. Most nights I was expressing milk to make his rice cereal with the next day so that made it seem even harder work. Thankfully I soon discovered 'just add water' cereal varieties that are much nicer than the boring baby rice. We also discovered that baby rice causes constipation so that box of cereal has now been retired to the back of the cupboard for the treatment of diarrhea only.
One of the major challenges so far has been dealing with belly ache. There's nothing worse than spending 45 mins fighting to get a kid to nap cos he's got bellyache from eating too close to bedtime. Actually, the worst was when he didn't poo for nearly a week. One night his belly was giving him so much trouble that he woke every hour for the first 4 or 5 hours of the night. We're slowly working out what effects different foods have and when are good times of day to eat.
Another challenge is coming up with ideas for what to give him. Breakfast is pretty easy as there's a wide choice of cereals and yoghurts out there. Then we began introducing things like fruit and toast with fruit puree at lunch time. Dinner is taking a lot more thought. I'm not a fan of giving him dinners from a jar and he certainly prefers 'real' food over purees. I've been trying to work out which of our 'grown up' meals he can share with us. Yesterday he had some stew (made with extra low salt stock cubes) and today he had some of our spinach and bacon pasta (minus the bacon and tomatoes so really it was just pasta, creme fraiche and spinach). He absolutely loved both of these and cried when he'd eaten it all which I take as a huge compliment to my cooking!
We've been using a mixture of purees and 'baby led' weaning and found the boy really loves feeding himself, trying new things and getting to share what the grown ups eat. It's great to see him loving food and growing in his confidence and ability to feed himself. He's so confident with food he now assumes it's all for him. We went out for milkshakes with a friend the other week and when a huge milkshake was put on the table in front of him check out his reaction...
Without skipping a beat he just leaned forward and grabbed the handle and began reaching for the straw. He was most upset when he was told it wasn't for him.
So, my only question is this - now we've taught him to eat 'grown up' food, how do we teach him not to steal food from people?!
haha love this! I also eat way more regularly now that Peej is eating! And more healthily! Handy!
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