More with eating

I've continued to work on my laid back approach to baby-led weaning. Owen seems to enjoy it more than me force feeding him with a spoon and we've been experimenting with solids twice a day now! We're (Jeremy and I) also trying to get away from eating meals at our coffee table, which we've always done. In our house, the kitchen table is a dump zone for mail and junk but I've cleared it off to show Owen how respectable people eat meals (not the TV watching barbarians we used to be!) I think this has contributed to his added interest. If I am eating, he wants to be eating too. With Jeremy's schedule, I eat most of my meals alone - so its nice to have some company.

Dinners out are pretty entertaining with Owen now, too. We had a coupon so we tried a new Israeli restaurant down the street from us this week. Owen enjoyed some pita with hummus on it. He would suck the hummus off and then wait for us to put more on. The only downside was that we had to hold the pita or else he would drop it on the floor - and this was the best pita I've ever had (flown in from Israel) so wasting it wasn't an option.

We still do give O some foods on a spoon. Right now yogurt is staple. He loves it. At first I bought him the Yo-Baby kind which he gobbled up, but then I noticed it had lots of added sugar so now I just give him Stonyfield whole cream plain yogurt. I usually mix in whatever fruit cube I have in the freezer (usually pears) and O is happy with that. Its much cheaper to give him yogurt this way and I feel better adding fruit instead of the sugar.

Tonight I had macaroni and cheese for dinner (fancy, I know) and O ate about six shells, and then of course his yogurt. For dessert I gave him two yogurt melts which he really likes.

Please don't think this is a perfect science, some meals he's into what I give him and some he still sits there with pursed lips and stink face. This boy has more faces than you would believe! The main problem I have found is that O bites off more than he can chew - especially with toast. Then he gags (which the book said is pretty normal) and I end up swiping it out of his mouth because the gagging freaks me out. I'm sure we'll get there, its all about experimentation at this point. I'm not worried about calories, just offering him opportunities to try new things.

Here are some outtakes from lunch the other day. I made pot roast with carrots so I gave him some of the cooked carrots out of that, steamed broccoli and of course, yogurt. He can't feed himself with the spoon but he sure likes to try!

Broccoli "tree" bites

First taste of cooked carrot

and yogurt completes the mess