Bananas are a great first food that babies can hold in their hands and gnaw away at. It may take a month or so for babies to learn to feed themselves and the first months more food ends up on the floor for the dog to clean up or on baby's face but it's an excellent way for babies to develop hand eye coordination. Breastfed babies have been essentially feeding themselves at the breast for months, you are only offering food when the baby is hunger. They determine how much they eat and learn to stop when full.
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This is the same idea behind what's termed "Baby Led Weaning" (weaning meaning eating something besides breastmilk) Offer baby food and let them determine how much they will eat instead of coaxing one more bite of peas because it you want to empty the jar.
I also have a baby food mill that I put harder to chew foods like green beans, meats and leftovers into, grind up and hand to Laura to eat. Healthy, easy to eat leftover or food off your plate are great foods for baby as well. Total confession: I give Laura waffle fries when we go to Chick Fila.
I also make cubes of veggies and fruit and freeze them either on a tray, egg carton or ice cube tray. Baked, steamed or microwaved sweet potatoes, soft veggies such as squash, broccoli can be gnawed on even by a baby without teeth. Laura loves apples that have been steamed and peeled. Shredded and steamed carrots are easy to make and feed. She's also obsessed with peaches this summer. She can easily eat half a peach or more at one sitting.
Laura loves to fed herself messy foods such as greek yogurt and hummus. They are thick enough I can place a blob on her tray or hand her spoonfuls at a time. She grabs the spoons and feds herself. She doesn't let me put the spoon in her mouth!
I highly recommend a highchair that is easy to clean without nooks and crannies and washable bibs. I was not pleased with the Circo brand ones from Target, they aren't meant to be machine washed and they fell apart when I washed them.
What have you cooked for baby?
.JPG)
This is the same idea behind what's termed "Baby Led Weaning" (weaning meaning eating something besides breastmilk) Offer baby food and let them determine how much they will eat instead of coaxing one more bite of peas because it you want to empty the jar.
I also have a baby food mill that I put harder to chew foods like green beans, meats and leftovers into, grind up and hand to Laura to eat. Healthy, easy to eat leftover or food off your plate are great foods for baby as well. Total confession: I give Laura waffle fries when we go to Chick Fila.
I also make cubes of veggies and fruit and freeze them either on a tray, egg carton or ice cube tray. Baked, steamed or microwaved sweet potatoes, soft veggies such as squash, broccoli can be gnawed on even by a baby without teeth. Laura loves apples that have been steamed and peeled. Shredded and steamed carrots are easy to make and feed. She's also obsessed with peaches this summer. She can easily eat half a peach or more at one sitting.
Laura loves to fed herself messy foods such as greek yogurt and hummus. They are thick enough I can place a blob on her tray or hand her spoonfuls at a time. She grabs the spoons and feds herself. She doesn't let me put the spoon in her mouth!
I highly recommend a highchair that is easy to clean without nooks and crannies and washable bibs. I was not pleased with the Circo brand ones from Target, they aren't meant to be machine washed and they fell apart when I washed them.
What have you cooked for baby?
Cole used to LOVE cantaloupe as a baby...I mashed it in our Beaba without steaming first. I always wished I could freeze it but read (somewhere?) that it wasn't suitable for freezing...sadness. Now days we just give Vera whatever we are eating (last night - 3 servings of Beef Stroganoff with Egg Noodles...how healthy are we?)
ReplyDeleteI fed my girls canned baby food, can you believe? Back then, we didn't eat very healthy and I didn't cook much, either. It's the biggest thing I would go back and change if I could!
ReplyDelete