Linking up for Munchkin Meals (hosted by Brittany at A Healthy Slice of Life) this month!

Forgive the long wordy, picture heavy post as we explore the beginnings of our girl’s relationship with food.

Phoebe has thoroughly been enjoying food lately. As you’ll notice, we’re still doing mostly pureed food, but offering larger pieces of fruits and veggies that can be held in her hand while we sit by to make sure she doesn’t choke if she manages to gum off a bigger chunk.  We’ve only been giving her really soft foods, though, so we haven’t had any choking scares.

That being said, over the past few days I’ve noticed that she hasn’t been as interested in grabbing food herself, and has been preferring the spoon or the “feeder” we got her over attempting to hold onto actual food.  We think it must be a part of teething because while she likes the food, she also really likes to gnaw on the spoon and the feeder especially.  It’s a nice squishy rubber that combined with fruit from the fridge probably feels really nice on her gums.

We aren’t really worried about allergies since food allergies don’t run in either of our families and Enzo had no troubles, so, seeing that she is doing so well, we’ll probably start giving her a lot more options to try.

Some of her big favorites are sweet potatoes and butternut squash (not too surprising), as well as pears and nectarines for fruit.  She seems to be on the fence as far as bananas go, but she really won’t refuse anything. She was also on the fence with avocado, but seems to think it’s okay. She really liked the roasted carrot we gave her, and she gave the broccoli a good go as well.

While I do make some of her baby food, I admit it’s been much easier this time around to buy organic baby food.  I had so much more time with Enzo, so sometimes it can be difficult to put forth the effort to make up a bunch of baby food when I can reach into the pantry for food that sounds more interesting than anything I made.  The biggest thing is that Phoebe is a much different eater than Enzo was.  Enzo ate a lot more formula and would kind of explore solid food and eat here and there, but he really didn’t eat a ton of purees or solid pieces of food.  Phoebe, however, gets bored with her bottles and wants to eat solid food and can eat a full jar of baby food in one serving (Enzo never did this). She doesn’t quite have the patience to slowly gnaw and explore whole foods, which is why we got the feeder so she could more easily eat slippery foods at a faster pace. She ate almost an entire nectarine this way the other day. We do feed her a bottle before solid meals so she isn’t starving when it’s time to put her in the high chair, but she still seems to prefer whatever method is quickest and easiest, and for now that seems to be giving her the spoon after we load it with food.

I’m sure we’ll find a decent groove soon, and slowly phase out more of the pureed food.  It’s funny just how different things are the second time around, though.  They are both such different eaters, and I thought this time around would just be a breeze. I’d quickly whip up some baby food and have time to prepare soft foods for Phoebe to handle herself because Enzo would amuse himself while I did this. Well, we’ll make it work. Now I just need to show Phoebe how fun solid food can be, and see how we can get day care on board as well.

It’s been a fun few weeks introducing Phoebe to the world of solids… well, sort of.  Can you call pureed food a solid?  As with Enzo, we’re kind of doing our own version of baby led weaning by doing what is easiest for day care (as well as ourselves), but without limiting Phoebe too much. Much like Enzo, she’s the one who made it clear to all of us that she was ready to move beyond just bottles – she wasn’t finishing them and seemed bored and started reaching for our food. So, we thought we’d see how she did with some oatmeal, and she loved it!

We’ve since tried carrots, sweet potatoes, peas, green beans, avocado, bananas, pears, apples… the list goes on.  Most of them have been pureed, but we’ve also offered some whole foods as well.  We were actually surprised at just how quickly she started grabbing the spoon and from the get-go she was able to navigate it to her mouth.

While she’s at daycare, they typically feed her themselves – she’s one of many infants, but when she’s at home with us we generally load the spoon for her, and then bring it within her reach and she grabs it and puts it in her mouth.  She’s been eager to try larger chunks of food as well, and we’ve let her experience several of them, but I’ll save that for another post.

The most suprising thing is that we haven’t really run into anything yet that she has no interest in.  With Enzo there were a few foods he just had no interest in (like avocado) and sometimes peas, but this little girl has been willing to eat them all.  I really hope that’s a great sign of things to come.

In the meantime, maybe she can show her big brother that trying new foods is totally cool and he should do the same. 😉