Eating

We've posted in the past about various eating difficulties with Brynna, but we've got no complaints right now! She eats all sorts of things, demanding a taste of anything being served in her vicinity.

What sorts of things does an almost-toothless 11-month-old eat? First of all, Cheerios! Other finger-food favorites include black beans, pieces of bread, and pieces of veggie burger. She loves it when we feed her yogurt mixed with pureed fruit like apples, pears, and mangos. We mix powdered baby oatmeal, which is iron-fortified, into various things to act as a thickener. She often enjoys pureed carrots and broccoli mixed with pumped breastmilk and oatmeal, and last night had pureed summer squash and carrots with yogurt.

At Miss A's, Brynna often gets to have pancakes for breakfast (made with fruit and soymilk and other healthy add-ins). She likes having bits of burrito or pieces of pasta with sauce or sometimes mac and cheese for lunch.

In addition to nursing three times a day—just before we get up, when I pick her up in the evening, and sometime in the night—she drinks watered-down juice and soymilk from her Tilty. (Absolutely no interest in drinking breastmilk from bottle or Tilty. She wants it straight from the source. Though Alex has recently had luck with a combo of breastmilk and chocolate milk.)

The other night at the street fair, Brynna even enjoyed gumming our ice cream (mint chocolate chip and chocolate chip cookie dough) and eating little pieces of falafel sandwich.

She is also getting very interested in the mechanics of eating with a spoon. She likes to grab the handle and put the end of the spoon with the food in her mouth. Then she holds the spoon back out in the direction of the bowl and I help her load it back up. Her aim is actually quite good, she hits her mouth most of the time! She also really likes to place individual Cheerios on the top of each spoonful of food that I hold out to her.

Wanting to encourage these self-feeding forays, I ordered her some baby eating equipment from a cool website that has BPA, PVC, phthalate-free kid stuff. We got three bowls that have a suction cup attachment (so Brynna can focus on learning how spoon up food, not experimenting with gravity), two different kinds of baby spoons that are easy to hold, and a big suction-cuppy placemat to take to restaurants.

Here is Brynna practicing with some yogurt:

The spoon can get tiring, but yogurt feels awfully nice on the fingers:



Yogurt can make the hair nice and shiny, too:



And if all else fails, there's always the direct approach:



Jasper likes to lurk about in wait:



Because sometimes, Brynna likes to slip him some goodies:



Now, if we could only teach him to nibble up all the Cheerios on the floor...