We try to eat food. Real food. Sometimes we have sweet potato fries for lunch, and I often have a stash of chocolate hidden in the cupboard, and we have resorted to gummy bear bribery in the potty learning realm, but mostly we do pretty well. So, when the time comes to start feeding our babies food, well, I just grab something from the fridge, or off my plate, and toss it to them.
For the record, I’m not completely lazy about this. I did read about the way you’re “supposed” to feed children. We have allergies in our family, both from my side and from the donor. The kids’ half-brother had a crazy reaction to egg when I was there once, and it was scary. My brother pretty much dies if he touches tree nuts (for real). So, I was a little worried about making sure certain things were slower to be introduced, even though I know there is literature that debunks the whole delayed introduction = fewer allergies. So, we hold off on grains, dairy and nuts until after a year. But, this whole, “start with cereal, move on to single vegetables, avoid strawberries, etc, etc” thing? Yeah, I think it’s baloney (something else I don’t feed my kids!).
Maren’s first food was avocado. Nate’s was mango. However, before the real ingesting occurred, there were sprigs of lavender, mint leaves, carrot sticks to gnaw on, and any number of other substances. I pulled a really long piece of grass out of Nate’s diaper not too long ago. Yum.
hmmm, not too sure about the bananas
We wait until babies satisfy a little list before we feed them anything:
- they have to be sitting independently
- they have to be able to pick the food up themselves
- the tongue thrust reflex needs to be history
- they have to be at least six months old
So, far, our kids have been a bit on the physically precocious side, so the physical readiness hasn’t been an issue. They’ve both been really interested in food pretty early on too. So, they’ve both been given food as of six months and a bit.
Nate’s really keen on egg yolk, and hamburger. I can’t believe, as a life-long vegetarian, that I actually fed my child meat, never mind hamburger, but this was a local, grass-fed, 100% beef patty, and, well, it’s what we were eating! He’s also totally obsessed with mango. And blueberries. See, did I mention I break all the food eating rules? And strawberries. Again with the rule-breaking. I don’t mash anything. I don’t cut anything into minute pieces. I just break it in to chunks if necessary and hand it over.
And then I am thankful for our dog’s one redeeming quality. She’s a living vacuum cleaner and mop all in one. Halleluia. If you have small children, I would highly recommend a dog, if only for the floor-cleaning benefits.
definitely a fan of the egg!
Are you horrified? I get a little horrified when I see people feeding their children cereal, I will admit. I also gag a bit when they hand over huge, full sippy cups of cow’s milk. And hot dogs, those give me the creeps. How do you feed your children? Do you have rules? What grosses you out?
some of the books I read and liked on the subject:
(and if I had figured out how to make those snazzy link things that hide the url under a tidy little word, well, I would have done it that way. one of these days…)
Yup, we’re pretty much the exact same way. I could have written this myself, except that I didn’t. Now when I wrote my post on feeding babies I’ll have to come up with my own witty and funny comments. Darnit
Sadly, with Isaac we did the rice cereal and cheerios thing (yuck). Aliza has been a totally different story though – lots of meat, butter, veggies, fruits, eggs… and our sanity-saver “junk food” of choice is rice cakes (for the van, etc). Only the plain ones, and the only ingredient is brown rice…
Yay for you doing hamburger! I’m so happy! (And I’d love to hear about how that’s going! – the meat-eating that is).